by Joe Turner, for Yahoo! HotJobs
As the economy has worsened and millions of job seekers are chasing after fewer and fewer jobs, what you put on your resume has become more important than ever. Before you send your resume anywhere, run it through this quick five-point checklist to determine if it needs a tune-up or a complete overhaul.
1. Clear Objective
There has been a lot of debate lately among the resume-writing "chattering classes" about whether today's resumes even need an objective. After 15 years of reading resumes for my clients, my answer is definitely, "Yes." However, I should clarify. By "objective," I'm not referring to the fluff that most job seekers concoct. The objective should be your targeted job title and nothing more. This focuses the resume and necessitates that you use the rest of the resume to support why you're the best candidate to fill this particular job title. It also leaves no doubt in your reader's mind about who you are.
2. Opening Statement
Does your resume open with a long paragraph titled, "Summary of Qualifications"? Problem: Of the thousands that I've read over the years, most are nothing more than fiction. Long laundry lists of skills and assorted keywords. Two of the biggest offending phrases are "results-driven" and that ever popular "proven track record."
If your resume looks like this, you might want to rethink your approach. Don't bore your reader by emphasizing keywords and hackneyed clichs. Employers want to know how you can solve their problem right now. Don't annoy them by failing to answer this urgent question.
Instead, include a simple, concise opening statement. This one sentence is usually called a Unique Selling Proposition. It should define who you are, your single biggest strength and end with a benefit that you offer. Ideally it should be something measurable, since everything boils down to dollars. This strips away the fluff and quickly answers that critical question in their mind. Do this, and you make it easy for them to call you.
3. Measurable Results
OK, now you have a great opening statement. For Act Two, you must back that up with added proof. Don't rely on tired clichs. Tantalize them with a bulleted list of specific achievements. By achievements, I mean an end result that reaped some benefit for either your employer or the client you've worked for.
This may require that you think outside your box or cubicle. Regardless of your role, you have a bottom-line impact on your employer. Your job is to communicate your true value clearly and specifically to your next employer. It may take a bit of effort to develop these bullets. And that's all they should be. No more than a one-sentence brief description of the benefit or result and how you accomplished it.
If you can put together a concise list of five to seven good achievements that are Return-on-Investment (ROI)-oriented, you'll score a lot quicker than relying on those unexciting clichs.
4. One Job Title, One Resume
Resume readers are very focused and they're looking for specific items. They have very short attention spans and can be easily distracted. When they get distracted, they start getting confused, and when that happens, they screen you out and reach for the next resume.
So, if you are looking for a position as a project manager, tell them why you're a great project manager. That's all they want to know. Don't tell them about how you used to work as a carpenter or how you managed and ran your own consulting business. They don't want or need to know about your other unrelated careers or positions. Even if you were great at them.
Use one resume to sell one job title. If the resume doesn't clearly explain why you're the best project manager in your city, then either drop the information or minimize it because it doesn't belong there.
Stick with one career on one resume and you'll have less chance of getting screened out.
5. "Above the Fold"
Place all of your most important selling information at the very top half of page one. Most resume readers spend about 20 seconds of actual eyeball time before they decide to move to the next resume. They are not going to waste their time looking through your resume to find critical information, such as how you "increased revenues $350K" or "decreased labor costs by 12%." This information should be polished like gemstones and presented on a silver platter at the very top of the first page. Do this, and they'll be spending a lot longer than 20 seconds on your resume.
As a recruiter, Joe Turner spent 15 years finding and placing top candidates in some of the best jobs of their careers. The author of "Job Search Secrets Unlocked" and "Paycheck 911," Joe also hosts his weekly "Job Search Guy Radio Show" on JobRadio.fm as well as other locations. You'll find free tips and advice here.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
PAGES FROM HISTORY: INDIAN INFLUENCE ON TIBET
PAGES FROM HISTORY: INDIAN INFLUENCE ON TIBET
By Prof. A.V. Narasimha Murthy, former Head, Department of Ancient History & Archaeology, University of Mysore.
Exactly fifty years ago, His Holiness Dalai Lama came to India in exile after the Chinese aggression of Tibet. From then on, the fourteenth religious leader of Tibet has been living in India hoping to get back to his motherland when the congenial atmosphere sets in there.
Actually, Dalai Lama is not a personal name but it denotes the exalted position like Shan-karacharya, Jeeyar, Jagadguru etc. In about 1550 AD, a Tibetan guru of Lama faith visited the court of Mongol Chief Altan Khan. The Khan was pleased by the scholarship and compassionate attitude of this Tibetan monk (Blod-nams-rgya-mto) and gave him the title 'Tale' meaning ocean of knowledge and compassion.
In course of time 'Tale' became Dalai. As he was following Lama religion, he came to be called Dalai Lama, and all the succee-ding chiefs assumed that title. It is believed that Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of Bodhisatva Avalokitesvar, like the avataras of the Hindu religion, to help the people to attain salvation. Except the one Dalai Lama (Yantan) who was the great grandson of Altan Khan, all others are of Tibetan origin. The present Dalai Lama was born in 1935 and next year he will enter into 75th year and that will be a great occasion for the Tibetans.
Gampo of Ancient Tibet
Though India welcomed Dalai Lama and extended a hand of friendship fifty years ago, actually India's contact with Tibet goes back to more than 1500 years. Tibet was a group of small States and Gampo united all of them in about 620 AD and the Chinese king gave his daughter in marriage to him. Gampo defeated the Hindu king of Nepal and Nepal became a part of Tibet for sometime. Gampo introduced Buddhism to Tibet and hence he is considered as the Father of ancient Tibet. Tibet defeats China
During 6th-7th centuries AD Tibet became so powerful as to attack China and occupy parts of that country. Unable to drive the Tibetans out of their country, the Chinese king agreed to give fifty thousand rolls of silk cloth as tribute to Tibet. After sometime, the Chinese stopped this tribute and immediately Tibet waged a war on China and defeated it. The Chinese king made a treaty with Tibet by surrendering huge amounts of gold and silk and this is recorded on a stone dated 821 AD which is still available in Lhasa.
Padmasambhava
Then came another important Chief Trison Dexen who took great interest in the development of Buddhism. After visiting India many times, he was greatly impressed by the famous Nalanda University. There was a famous scholar by name Padmasam-bhava at Nalanda and Dexen invited him to visit Tibet and teach Buddhism. Padmasambhava accepted the offer and went to Tibet. It was he who started the Lama School of Buddism. Actually Lamaism is a harmoious combination of Saivism, Tantric cult and Mahayan Buddhism.
There was a competition in Tibet between the religious teachers who came from China and the scholars from India headed by Padmasambhava in 792 AD. The Chinese scholars were unable to explain Tao philosophy whereas Indian scholars could explain the tenets of Buddhism in attractive language and people voted for Indian Buddhism. Chinese scholars left Tibet. Indian scholars began translating Sanskrit and Pali texts into Tibetan.
Dipankara
Then came another scholar Dipankara, also called Atisha, who was the Vice-Chancellor of the Vikramashila University in India. He built many Buddhist monasteries and educational institutions and became a patron of Buddhism. Actually he stands next only to Buddha and Padmasambhava in religious hierarchy.
The Indian Buddhist scholars gave equal opportunity for women also in religious matters. Worship of Buddha, Bodhisatva and other deities also became popular. These concepts looked attractive to common people and by this Indian Buddhist scholars gained an upper hand in Tibet.
Mongol attack
When things were moving in this congenial way, the notorious Changez Khan attacked Tibet. He looted Lhasa, killed hundreds of people and carried all Tibetan wealth to Mongolia. The Tibetans were happy that Khan did not carry Buddhist manuscripts. Tibetan Sakya King Godan explained to his subjects thus: 'Money and wealth which we have lost at the hands of the Mongols can easily be earned but the Buddhist works if lost could not have been replaced or earned again'. However, the Mongolian influence on Tibet continued.
Panchen Lama
But Indian influence continued in Tibetan religious and social life as revealed by the stories of Naropa and Tilopa.
An Indian scholar started a monastery at a place called Samye which had rarest of Buddhist manuscripts. The Mongolian Gusri Khan died in 1655 AD and his successors did not show much interest in ruling over Tibet. In the meantime, Chinese began to interfere in Tibetan political affairs. Dalai Lama practically became the head of Tibet. Just to undermine the influence of Dalai Lama over Tibet, the Chinese appointed Panchen Lama as the head of Tibet. This inaugurated the tradition of Panchen Lama in Tibetan history.
The Chinese expected that there would be quarrel between Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama so that they could intervene. But they were disappointed as Panchen Lama accepted the superiority of Dalai Lama. Even now Dalai Lama enjoys a superior status. Without any other course, the Chinese made an aggression against Tibet which resulted in Dalai Lama coming to India fifty years ago.
I had the good fortune of presenting a research paper on Indian influence on Tibet at a conference held in Buddha Gaya which was inaugurated by Dalai Lama. After listening to my paper, His Holiness remarked that Indians know more about Tibetan history than the Tibetans themselves. He was further happy to know that I was from Mysore city close to Bylukuppe, the Tibetan colony.
Thus Tibetans are friends of India for the past 1500 years. A long standing friendship indeed !
By Prof. A.V. Narasimha Murthy, former Head, Department of Ancient History & Archaeology, University of Mysore.
Exactly fifty years ago, His Holiness Dalai Lama came to India in exile after the Chinese aggression of Tibet. From then on, the fourteenth religious leader of Tibet has been living in India hoping to get back to his motherland when the congenial atmosphere sets in there.
Actually, Dalai Lama is not a personal name but it denotes the exalted position like Shan-karacharya, Jeeyar, Jagadguru etc. In about 1550 AD, a Tibetan guru of Lama faith visited the court of Mongol Chief Altan Khan. The Khan was pleased by the scholarship and compassionate attitude of this Tibetan monk (Blod-nams-rgya-mto) and gave him the title 'Tale' meaning ocean of knowledge and compassion.
In course of time 'Tale' became Dalai. As he was following Lama religion, he came to be called Dalai Lama, and all the succee-ding chiefs assumed that title. It is believed that Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of Bodhisatva Avalokitesvar, like the avataras of the Hindu religion, to help the people to attain salvation. Except the one Dalai Lama (Yantan) who was the great grandson of Altan Khan, all others are of Tibetan origin. The present Dalai Lama was born in 1935 and next year he will enter into 75th year and that will be a great occasion for the Tibetans.
Gampo of Ancient Tibet
Though India welcomed Dalai Lama and extended a hand of friendship fifty years ago, actually India's contact with Tibet goes back to more than 1500 years. Tibet was a group of small States and Gampo united all of them in about 620 AD and the Chinese king gave his daughter in marriage to him. Gampo defeated the Hindu king of Nepal and Nepal became a part of Tibet for sometime. Gampo introduced Buddhism to Tibet and hence he is considered as the Father of ancient Tibet. Tibet defeats China
During 6th-7th centuries AD Tibet became so powerful as to attack China and occupy parts of that country. Unable to drive the Tibetans out of their country, the Chinese king agreed to give fifty thousand rolls of silk cloth as tribute to Tibet. After sometime, the Chinese stopped this tribute and immediately Tibet waged a war on China and defeated it. The Chinese king made a treaty with Tibet by surrendering huge amounts of gold and silk and this is recorded on a stone dated 821 AD which is still available in Lhasa.
Padmasambhava
Then came another important Chief Trison Dexen who took great interest in the development of Buddhism. After visiting India many times, he was greatly impressed by the famous Nalanda University. There was a famous scholar by name Padmasam-bhava at Nalanda and Dexen invited him to visit Tibet and teach Buddhism. Padmasambhava accepted the offer and went to Tibet. It was he who started the Lama School of Buddism. Actually Lamaism is a harmoious combination of Saivism, Tantric cult and Mahayan Buddhism.
There was a competition in Tibet between the religious teachers who came from China and the scholars from India headed by Padmasambhava in 792 AD. The Chinese scholars were unable to explain Tao philosophy whereas Indian scholars could explain the tenets of Buddhism in attractive language and people voted for Indian Buddhism. Chinese scholars left Tibet. Indian scholars began translating Sanskrit and Pali texts into Tibetan.
Dipankara
Then came another scholar Dipankara, also called Atisha, who was the Vice-Chancellor of the Vikramashila University in India. He built many Buddhist monasteries and educational institutions and became a patron of Buddhism. Actually he stands next only to Buddha and Padmasambhava in religious hierarchy.
The Indian Buddhist scholars gave equal opportunity for women also in religious matters. Worship of Buddha, Bodhisatva and other deities also became popular. These concepts looked attractive to common people and by this Indian Buddhist scholars gained an upper hand in Tibet.
Mongol attack
When things were moving in this congenial way, the notorious Changez Khan attacked Tibet. He looted Lhasa, killed hundreds of people and carried all Tibetan wealth to Mongolia. The Tibetans were happy that Khan did not carry Buddhist manuscripts. Tibetan Sakya King Godan explained to his subjects thus: 'Money and wealth which we have lost at the hands of the Mongols can easily be earned but the Buddhist works if lost could not have been replaced or earned again'. However, the Mongolian influence on Tibet continued.
Panchen Lama
But Indian influence continued in Tibetan religious and social life as revealed by the stories of Naropa and Tilopa.
An Indian scholar started a monastery at a place called Samye which had rarest of Buddhist manuscripts. The Mongolian Gusri Khan died in 1655 AD and his successors did not show much interest in ruling over Tibet. In the meantime, Chinese began to interfere in Tibetan political affairs. Dalai Lama practically became the head of Tibet. Just to undermine the influence of Dalai Lama over Tibet, the Chinese appointed Panchen Lama as the head of Tibet. This inaugurated the tradition of Panchen Lama in Tibetan history.
The Chinese expected that there would be quarrel between Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama so that they could intervene. But they were disappointed as Panchen Lama accepted the superiority of Dalai Lama. Even now Dalai Lama enjoys a superior status. Without any other course, the Chinese made an aggression against Tibet which resulted in Dalai Lama coming to India fifty years ago.
I had the good fortune of presenting a research paper on Indian influence on Tibet at a conference held in Buddha Gaya which was inaugurated by Dalai Lama. After listening to my paper, His Holiness remarked that Indians know more about Tibetan history than the Tibetans themselves. He was further happy to know that I was from Mysore city close to Bylukuppe, the Tibetan colony.
Thus Tibetans are friends of India for the past 1500 years. A long standing friendship indeed !
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
INDO-US relationship -
Transcript: Senior ex-US diplomat on India-US relations
Published: May 6 2009 09:04 | Last updated: May 6 2009 09:04
This is an edited version of a speech on “The Future of US-India Relations” delivered by Robert D. Blackwill, former US envoy to India, in New Delhi on 5 May 2009
Let me begin by very briefly putting US-India relations in its geopolitical context. We are, of course, in the worst global recession since the 1930’s. There is dangerous instability in many parts of the globe. And we are also facing the most perilous international security situation since before the 1973 Middle East war. Developments in the Greater Middle East are uniformly awful. Instability and violence is rising in Iraq as the United States begins to undertake its military withdrawal beginning with the major cities. Iran defiantly pursues its nuclear weapons program. Prospects for progress between Israel and the Palestinians are the grimmest in 25 years. The basic trends in Afghanistan are negative. Pakistan pulsates, perhaps fracturing at its core. Russia’s relations with the West are bad and unlikely to get much better very soon if at all. The effects of the rise of Chinese power on Asia writ large are, as Don Rumsfeld would put it, “a known unknown.” Much of the developing world is reeling from world economic downturn.
This is the treacherous context in which US-India relations in the near-term – the next several years – will develop. Before addressing this more immediate period, let me emphasize that in my view, the United States and India have a very bright future together in the decades ahead. I stressed that in an initial speech as American Ambassador in India on September 7, 2001. I believed it then and I believe it now. As my mentor, the incomparable Henry Kissinger, has put it – “The world faces four major problems — terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the movement of the centre of gravity from the Atlantic region to Asia and the impact of a globalised economy on the world order. The US and India have compatible, indeed overlapping, vital national interests in all four areas.”
If Henry Kissinger’s strategic framework reflected in this quotation is the best way to view US-India bilateral ties over the very long run, the subject of my speech today is shorter term in approach. I will look today at prospects for the Indo-American relationship in the next few years. Here is my headline in that regard. It will take very hard work and skillful diplomacy from both governments to keep the US-India relationship on its current plateau and to avoid a steady decline in our bilateral ties. I try to explain why in the rest of this presentation.
Let me stress that the Obama Administration in my view has an affirmative view of India. It admires India’s remarkable democracy. It is positively influenced by the Indian-American community whose political voice is growing in the United States. It hopes that India will become a partner on climate change and non-proliferation issues. It wishes to increase markedly the volume of US-India trade.
Thus, I take entirely at face value my old friend and Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg’s March 26 speech in which he said that “In the twenty-first century, the emergence of India as strong, stable, democratic and outwardly looking global player with global interests has the potential to enhance the effectiveness of the international system and the security and well-being of all, in a positive sum game,” and, “The real test of the relationship between the US and India will be how we work together on the great common challenges of our era – strengthening the global trade and investment system, addressing transnational threats like nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism and pandemic disease, and meeting the urgent danger that is posed by climate change.” In short, I believe the Obama Administration genuinely wants good relations with India and will work hard toward that end.
Having said that, I am concerned that there may be a substantial change underway in the quality and the intensity of US-India relations which goes counter to the good intentions of the two sides. Let me explain what I have in mind and what worries me.
President George W. Bush based his transformation of US-India Relations on the core strategic principle of democratic India as a key factor in balancing the rise of Chinese power. To be clear, this was not based on the concept of containing China. As you know, there is no better way to clear a room of Indian strategists than to advocate containing China. Rather, it centered on the idea that the United States and India in the decades ahead both had enormous equities in promoting responsible international policies on the part of China and that deep US-India bilateral cooperation in that respect was in the vital national interests of both countries. It was with this strategic paradigm in mind that the Bush Administration treated Indian with at least as much importance as China. For my analytical purposes here today, I am not saying whether this strategic approach regarding India and China on the part of the Bush Administration was right or wrong. There were critics of this approach, including my good friend Brent Scowcroft, who believes that such an Asian balance of power paradigm is both antique and dangerous in the current era. In any case, without this China factor at the fore in Washington, in my view the Bush Administration would not have negotiated the Civil Nuclear Agreement and the Congress would not have approved it.
At the same time, the long US-India negotiation on the civil-nuclear deal concentrated Washington minds on the bilateral relation and created over time strong relationships between the principal policy makers on the two sides. More important, it led to the de-hyphenization of US-India relations, separating India as a rising great power from India-Pakistan history and singularity, especially during George W. Bush’s second term.
Although it is certainly early days, there are preliminary indications that the Obama Administration has a different policy orientation towards India. First, it is not clear that the Obama Administration has the same preoccupation with the rise of Chinese power and India’s balancing role in it. Rather, Washington is now naturally focused on US-China economic relations, the G-2 as some analysts have named it, not least because of PRC holdings of US Treasury bonds and its major place in the world economy. So China today appears, at least to me, to be on a substantially higher plane in US diplomacy than India which seems to have been downgraded in Administration strategic calculations. Thank goodness the US-India 123 Agreement was completed because I am skeptical that it would have been successfully concluded under current conditions by this American Administration and Congress. In any case, there is no positive issue that I can see on the horizon that would have the same positive function and effects on US-India relations in the next several years as did the Civil Nuclear Agreement.
Moreover, I believe that it is fair to say that there is no one at the top of the Obama Administration who knows much about India. Let me stress this was also true in 2001 when the Bush team took office but they learned about India over the years for the reasons that I have suggested. By the same token, unsurprisingly there are now no close relationships between the policy makers in Washington and in New Delhi. This is nobody’s fault but just the way it is and as we know in life, unfamiliarity often breeds suspicion. Unfortunately, I do not see the evolution of events that would produce such policy intimacy between the two nations. At the same time, there are numerous issues that could cause a variety of problems in the US-India relationship in the next months and years.
This list obviously must begin with Pakistan. This is clearly the most serious issue between the United States and India. For every good reason, the Obama Administration is devoting enormous thought to Pakistan, since it is the most dangerous foreign policy problem that Washington presently faces. Indeed, in my judgment, the evolving situation in Pakistan is potentially the most dangerous international situation since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. As Vice President Biden has warned: “It is hard to imagine a greater nightmare for America than the world’s second-largest Muslim nation becoming a failed state in fundamentalists’ hands, with an arsenal of nuclear weapons and a population larger than Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea combined.” And President Obama deserves great credit for his April 29 statement that, “on the military side, you are starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally.” It has been many, many years since an American President has spoke so publicly, truthfully and bluntly to the leadership and people of Pakistan.
In my view, the United States has four vital national interests concerning what the Obama Administration calls AfPak, a holistic concept that unfortunately has been dear to the hearts of the Pakistan army for decades: 1) to prevent Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the possession of Islamic extremists; 2) to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for terrorists to launch attacks against the United States and its Allies and friends; 3) to avoid war between India and Pakistan; and 4) to prevent the Taliban and its radical collaborators from gaining control of Pakistan. Under the dynamic leadership of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke—relentless, experienced, charismatic as the New York Times accurately describes him, Obama policymakers are attempting to positively influence Pakistan where every single important trend that I can identify is negative and getting worse. Hats off to Ambassador Holbrooke and the Administration for their strategic thinking in seeing Pakistan as America’s most pressing important international problem and the one that currently poses the greatest threats to US vital national interests.
The Administration clearly has its work cut out for it. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen recent confirmed that elements of the ISI maintain links with extremists on Pakistan’s borders with both Afghanistan and India. General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, speaks of cases “in the fairly recent past” where the ISI appeared to have warned Jihadis that their positions had been discovered. And the New York Times recently pointed out that ISI support to Taliban commanders extends to “money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance”.
In addition, we all know of the spreading Wahabi-based fanaticism and violence inside Pakistan, away from the Taliban’s Pashtun mountain strongholds and into Punjab. The possible effect of such an enveloping US preoccupation with Pakistan seems on its way in practical terms to re-hyphenating the US-India relationship, leading the Administration to see India largely through the lens of deeply disturbing developments in Pakistan, at the expense of a focus on strategic cooperation writ large between Washington and New Delhi. This will produce an understandable and growing US interest in trying to reduce tensions in the India-Pakistan relationship, not least because Islamabad will speciously argue that tensions with India and the Kashmir dispute are preventing it from moving robustly against the Islamic terrorists within their midst. So India may well encounter eventual US pressure from on the subject of Kashmir. This would be ironic since the Indian Government reached through secret negotiations with General Musharraf a momentous breakthrough on Kashmir which alas did not survive Musharraf’s downward spiral and ultimate fall from power.
I strongly support the Administration’s efforts to internationalize the Pakistan problem and to bring to bear as many external resources and capabilities as possible to try to begin to improve the situation in Pakistan. However, it would be a mistake for Washington to treat India as mostly at the margin of US consideration of policy toward Pakistan, as a lesser player on issues related to the future of Pakistan. After all, it is India that is the object of Pakistan obsession, as President Obama pointed out. It is India that is continually attacked by terrorists based in Pakistan with the support of elements of the Pakistan military and today infiltration across the Line of Control is increasing. It is India that Pakistan claims is illegally occupying Kashmir. And it is only India that could again find itself at war with Pakistan, triggered by another Mumbai-like attack. So India is profoundly connected to the future of Pakistan, not on the periphery of it.
Let me make another point concerning Pakistan. Some Administration officials opine that the United States, India and Pakistan are now together in facing “a common threat, a common challenge, a common task”, in seeking to defeat Islamic terrorists based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Oh, if that were only so. But it is not. If you doubt me, please ask any member of the Pakistan army which has for three decades regarded Islamic terrorists as an abiding policy instrument against India and a crucial element in Pakistan’s enduring concept of strategic depth. These objectives are deep in ISI’s DNA and there is no magic wand available in Washington that will make that hard fact disappear. In short, there is no sign that the Government of Pakistan has made a fundamental national choice to seek to rid itself of Jihadism. Indeed, Secretary of State Clinton stated it well in April 23 testimony before the Congress, when she said that the Pakistan government “is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists.”
I conclude my remarks centered directly on Pakistan by observing that no one in Washington on either side of the political aisle has a set of penetrating prescriptions that promise to end the internal slide of Pakistan. (If I may say so, the same is true in India.) Conditioning military assistance on the Pakistan army acting vigorously against the Taliban and its allies should be a US requirement. Training the Pakistan army in counter-insurgency techniques makes sense. Working out joint management of Predator attacks would reduce the public outcry in Pakistan. Diversifying NATO supply routes into Afghanistan to avoid over-dependence on Pakistan would help. Staying out of Pakistan’s domestic politics is a must. Reducing the American public footprint in Pakistan would certainly be wise to try to deprive the Taliban of nationalist anti-foreign space. Attempting over the very long term to strengthen Pakistan civil society is a good Western investment.
But none of this gets in the next year or two at the fundamental problem. Islamic extremism is systemically on the rise in Pakistan and elites there—both civilian and military—do not appear to have the will or the means to resist. One, of course, urgently hopes that will change, but it is important to understand that US policy instruments are too weak to affect importantly these evolving and disturbing societal trends in Pakistan. Put another way, in my judgment, American policies cannot improve the current deteriorating internal situation in Pakistan. That is a preeminent task for Pakistanis. But maladroit US actions can make the situation in Pakistan worse.
This brings me to Afghanistan, which presents another set of potential differences between Washington and New Delhi. First, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is now commonly said in the US that NATO cannot win in Afghanistan as long as Taliban sanctuaries exist in Pakistan. But as George Friedman concludes, “While U.S. and NATO forces must rely on increasingly unreliable Pakistani supply routes to fight the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan — fearful that the United States and India will establish a long-term strategic partnership — has the incentive to keep the jihadist insurgency boiling (preferably in Afghanistan) in order to keep the Americans committed to an alliance with Islamabad, however complex that alliance might be.” One must then ask how likely is it that Islamabad and the Pakistan military will change its long-time policy approach to Afghanistan?
As you know, the Obama Administration has announced in detail its policies regarding the war in Afghanistan, a conflict that the United States and its Allies are not winning and may be losing. As Henry Kissinger has noted, “The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.” Perhaps with this in mind, President Obama has ordered the deployment of 21,000 US troops to Afghanistan, over and above the 40,000 already there. But he has made clear that in order to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban, America will have to embark on a long and expensive campaign of nation building in Afghanistan and solicit assistance and support from Afghanistan’s neighbors.
I applaud the emphasis that the Administration is now putting on preventing Afghanistan from once again becoming a sanctuary from which terrorists can plan and carry out attacks against the United States and its friends and Allies. Consistent with the German philosopher Nietzsche’s admonition that, “Man’s most enduring stupidity is forgetting what he is trying to do,” what we should be trying to do in Afghanistan is not, as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates stresses, attempting to make that country a modern democratic “Valhalla.” That goal is far beyond America’s and indeed the world’s capabilities.
The preeminent Australian expert David Kilcullen has an entirely different emphasis, “Counterinsurgency demands the continuous presence of security forces”; “local alliances and partnerships with community leaders; creation of self-defending populations”; and “operation of small-unit ground forces in tandem with local security forces.” In short, counterinsurgency does not require improved governance, not to say democratic practices, from the capital, a fundamental transformation that is highly unlikely in Afghanistan. Long distance American admonitions, no matter how well intentioned, will not change that Afghan reality. I will go even further. Any US strategy toward the Taliban that depends on substantially improved performance from the government in Kabul will fail.
Rather, the fate of Afghanistan one way or the other will be decided at the local and village level in the longer run by the competence and fighting spirit of the Afghan army and by economic development which ordinary Afghans can see and feel. Both these crucial projects will take several years at a minimum to accomplish and, therefore, Washington should stop talking about an exit strategy from Afghanistan. The only exit strategy available to the United States in the next year or two is defeat. I am convinced that the Obama Administration knows this to be true and for many reasons the US will not cut and run from Afghanistan as some in New Delhi’s salons seem to believe.
At the same time, it appears to me that India does not figure in an important way in US calculations regarding Afghanistan. Washington does not object to India’s economic development activities in Afghanistan, but is apparently sensitive to Islamabad’s complaints that India’s real objective in Afghanistan is to deprive Pakistan of the strategic depth that as I said a moment ago has preoccupied Pakistan military planners for decades. So the Administration may not give sufficient weight to India’s views regarding Afghanistan as say compared to those of Pakistan, the NATO Allies, Iran, China and Russia and seeks to limit the degree of Indian involvement in Afghanistan. This is especially odd given that according to polls, 74 per cent of Afghans see India favorably while 91 per cent of Afghans believe that Pakistan is playing a negative role in their country. For Washington to believe that India will not be a major player in the long-term future of Afghanistan is to ignore centuries of history, culture and mutual interaction between the two.
Finally, there is the notion emanating from Washington of so-called “reconciliation” with so-called “moderate” Taliban. This is a terrible idea, one of the very worst floating around Washington. Apart from the problem of defining the nature of an oxymoronic “moderate Taliban.” would such a “reconcilable” Taliban be against terrorism against India? Not likely. Moreover, under current conditions in Afghanistan in which NATO may be losing the war, such a move on Washington’s part could only be regarded by the resurgent Taliban as a serious sign of weakness and consequently fortify its will to win. As the great post-war Secretary of State Dean Acheson once trenchantly observed, “Negotiating … assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.” Who believes that concept currently applies to the Taliban? A moment may come in this long war when it will make sense for the United States to try to fracture the Taliban in Afghanistan by offering incentives to those willing to stop fighting. But that time, if it ever comes, would surely only be in the context of NATO succeeding militarily on the ground in Afghanistan, not before.
That brings us to Iran which is another knotty issue in US-India relations and a potential source of considerable bilateral tension. The Obama Administration is embarking on a diplomatic effort to persuade Tehran to suspend its nuclear weapons activities, a US initiative that all of us should applaud. However, this effort in my judgment has no chance of succeeding without a parallel strengthening of economic sanctions against Tehran. So it is just a matter of time before the US seeks to enlist India in applying a much more stringent sanctions regime concerning Iran, likely because of Russian opposition outside the legal authority of the UN Security Council. For many reasons with which you are all familiar, India is unlikely go along with such an American proposition.
China – It is not clear how Washington’s dominant preoccupation with economic cooperation with China will affect Indian Government calculations related to the US-India bilateral relationship and regional and Asian security. But if the US treats China in a privileged fashion and downgrades the quality of its substantive interaction with New Delhi, this is unlikely to produce spontaneous concessions from the Indian side on other matters of importance to Washington.
Nuclear Reprocessing and Civil-Nuclear Cooperation—Although it will undoubtedly be a tough negotiation, it seems likely that Washington and New Delhi will begin a reprocessing agreement this calendar year which would promote the sale of US nuclear reactors to India. Were that negotiation to break down, recriminations would surely fly from both capitals.
India’s Nuclear Weapons – There are a cluster of issues related to India’s nuclear weapons. The Obama team endorses both the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a freeze on the production of fissile material. Neither of these appears to be acceptable to the Indian Government today. President Obama is planning to put Vice President Biden in charge of what is expected to be the difficult job of getting the Senate to ratify the CTBT. Speaking recently, a senior Indian official said that India would not accept the CTBT because it “was not explicitly linked to the goal of nuclear disarmament.” Finally, it is not clear at least to me how the Obama team basically regards India’s nuclear weapons – as a destabilizing factor in South Asia; as a fact of life to grudgingly tolerate; or as a natural development from a close democratic collaborator and rising great power?
Climate Change – Secretary of State Clinton told delegates from 16 countries at a recent State Department conference on energy and climate that “The United States is fully engaged and determined to lead and make up for lost time both at home and abroad.” The Washington Post reports that “Days after the Obama administration unveiled a push to combat climate change, Indian officials said it was unlikely to prompt them to agree to binding emission cuts, a position among emerging economies that many say derails effective action.
“If the question is whether India will take on binding emission reduction commitments, the answer is no. It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce when 40 percent of Indians do not have access to electricity,” said a member of the Indian delegation to the recently concluded U.N. conference in Bonn, Germany, which is a prelude to a Copenhagen summit in December on climate change. Given how seriously the Obama Administration takes global warming, this issue risks being an increasing irritant in the US-India relationship.
WTO/Protectionism/H 1-B Visas—Despite appeals against trade protectionism, India imposed fresh tariffs on iron, steel and soybean oil in the early days of the financial crisis. Such a severe economic environment leads each country to fend for itself first — and India is no exception and neither is the most protectionist US Congress in many decades. In the same vein, President Obama’s stimulus package stops US companies, largely in banking and financial services, that take federal bailout money from hiring H-1B visa holders for two years if they have laid off American workers in the previous six months. The Administration has vowed to tighten restrictions and step up oversight of all work visa applications. These protectionist pressures are unlike to subside any time soon.
I have enumerated a whole host of potential and even likely problems in the US-India relationship in the next few years. In concluding, I would like to suggest what the United States and India should do in the period ahead to avoid systemic deterioration in our bilateral ties. Here are my personal policy prescriptions.
Pakistan –There should be intimate, intensive and utterly private US-India talks on how to deal with a turbulent and increasingly chaotic Pakistan in the period ahead, including examining the policy implications of various specific scenarios regarding deteriorating events in Pakistan. What seemed worst case a year ago in Pakistan may be on our mutual doorstep in the months ahead. I recognize that this is an exceptionally sensitive suggestion but it is absolutely necessary for a host of reasons, not least because it would be the United States and India that would be most affected by a Talibanisation of Pakistan. With that in mind, how can it be that we are not comprehensively and candidly talking together about it? Indeed, there may come a time if Pakistan continues its gradual descent into anarchy when the United States and India may be forced to adopt together, along with Iran and other nations, a strategy of attempting to quarantine the Wahabi infection as much as possible within Pakistan and to try to minimize its export.
Afghanistan – NATO is not currently winning the long war in Afghanistan. And the US, because of concerns in Islamabad, continues to find India more a liability than an asset regarding the future of Afghanistan. As an Indian friend said to me in 2002. “You Americans seem to think that Afghanistan is a scone, it is a baklava”. How prophetic he was. India will be a major player in Afghanistan whether the US likes it or not. That should be regarded in Washington as a positive factor as it seeks to reverse the problematical trends in Afghanistan and Washington should encourage India to enlarge its role in that country.
International Terrorism - This cluster of issues I have just mentioned is, of course, closely connected to the rise of Islamic extremism and the War on Terror. It is difficult to think of two countries outside of the Middle East that will be more strategically affected by this phenomenon than India and the United States. We talk far too little about this together, including what to say and do about it. In any case, Washington must not differentiate between “Bad Taliban” which kill American and “Good Taliban” which do not, but do mount attacks against India. Such a misguided US distinction would be poison for the US-India relationship.
Iran – In both countries there is considerable domestic political resonance and controversy surrounding this issue. It will not be diminished under the public spotlight. Washington needs to decisively accept India’s civilizational ties to Iran and act on that fact in American policies; and New Delhi needs to decisively accept and act in its policies on the fact that if Iran acquires a nuclear arsenal, it will dangerously disrupt regional and global equilibrium and be very bad for India over the long-term. I believe that the Obama Administration has it right in its approach to Iran. It is attempting to avoid a situation in 2010 or so in which the President faces essentially a binary choice regarding how to deal with Iran’s nuclear weapons program – either to launch a US military attack on those facilities with disastrous long term consequences, or to acquiesce to an Iranian nuclear weapons capability with disastrous long term consequences. So I believe that India should be far more forthcoming regarding much stronger international economic sanctions against Iran. That is the best hope for avoiding a catastrophe in the Middle East.
China – Again a delicate subject. But managing the rise of Chinese power is likely to be the most important strategic challenge for both countries in the next two decades. Containment is not an option but attempting together to shape Chinese policies in positive directions is. In particular, Washington should abandon any thoughts of a G-2. As former NSC Senior Director for Asia Dennis Wilder has written, “The G-2 moniker worries Asians… From Japan to India, there are concerns that America’s search for a solution to its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression may lead the Obama administration into not only expanded strategic economic and political dialogues with China but a full-blown strategic partnership. As the center of gravity of U.S. economic interests moves from Europe to Asia, they worry, the United States could become enamored of a “China first” approach.” This mistake must be avoided.
Civil Nuclear Cooperation – The two sides should initiate the US-India reprocessing agreement in the next six months. India should put aside any thought of renegotiating the 123 Agreement. If that Agreement is reopened, it will never be concluded.
Nuclear weapons – India should continue to cooperate closely with the US on non-proliferation and Washington should accept that India will mount a slow and modest upgrade of its nuclear arsenal in the years ahead. The United States should treat India as a nuclear weapons state. Any American backsliding in that regard would produce a very strong negative reaction from New Delhi.
Defense Cooperation – We need intensified interaction between the two militaries on military doctrine, force planning, weapons acquisition, interoperability, joint exercises, intelligence exchange, and threat assessments. In the next five years perhaps nothing would have such a positive long term impact on the bilateral relationship as India’s purchase of its next generation multi-role combat aircraft from the United States.
East Asia Security – Relations between India and Japan are improving. This is good for both countries and for the United States. These contacts should develop into governmental trilateral strategic discussions.
The Middle East – India has pervasive and growing vital national interests in the region but the two capitals mostly do not talk about it in a serious way. That should change.
Climate Change – The two sides should agree to disagree and not allow this issue to infect other dimensions of the bilateral relationship.
WTO – This may be in the too hard category given the differences between Washington and New Delhi but at a minimum both sides should drain the theatrics out of their exchanges on the subject.
US-India bilateral trade – Given the many challenges to bilateral relationship ties that I have discussed today, US-India trade and investment in the next few years is more important than ever. Indeed, it can have a salutary effect on the other aspects of the relationship. So I strongly encourage CII and the Indian business to intensify their engagement with American counterparts.
I would like to end my presentation as I began it, by expressing optimism with regard to the long-term prospects for the US-India relationship. The combination of our largely overlapping vital national interests and shared democratic values should produce a bright future for strategic collaboration between New Delhi and Washington in future decades. But in the immediate period before us, our bilateral ties are likely to be more problematical than we have seen in recent years. I want to stress that there is nothing inevitable about this. The two governments through their respective policies can avoid a downturn in our bilateral interaction and I, of course, hope that is what they will do. Ralph Waldo Emerson may have been overdoing it a bit when he asserted that, “There is properly no history, only biography.” But he is right that the individual leaders at the top of our two governments, beginning with the American President and Indian Prime Minister, will have a determining impact on the near-term outlook for US-India relations. We wish them well.
Ambassador Blackwill is former US Ambassador to India, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning and Presidential Envoy to Iraq. He is currently Senior Fellow at the RAND Corporation. His speech reflects his personal views.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: May 6 2009 09:04 | Last updated: May 6 2009 09:04
This is an edited version of a speech on “The Future of US-India Relations” delivered by Robert D. Blackwill, former US envoy to India, in New Delhi on 5 May 2009
Let me begin by very briefly putting US-India relations in its geopolitical context. We are, of course, in the worst global recession since the 1930’s. There is dangerous instability in many parts of the globe. And we are also facing the most perilous international security situation since before the 1973 Middle East war. Developments in the Greater Middle East are uniformly awful. Instability and violence is rising in Iraq as the United States begins to undertake its military withdrawal beginning with the major cities. Iran defiantly pursues its nuclear weapons program. Prospects for progress between Israel and the Palestinians are the grimmest in 25 years. The basic trends in Afghanistan are negative. Pakistan pulsates, perhaps fracturing at its core. Russia’s relations with the West are bad and unlikely to get much better very soon if at all. The effects of the rise of Chinese power on Asia writ large are, as Don Rumsfeld would put it, “a known unknown.” Much of the developing world is reeling from world economic downturn.
This is the treacherous context in which US-India relations in the near-term – the next several years – will develop. Before addressing this more immediate period, let me emphasize that in my view, the United States and India have a very bright future together in the decades ahead. I stressed that in an initial speech as American Ambassador in India on September 7, 2001. I believed it then and I believe it now. As my mentor, the incomparable Henry Kissinger, has put it – “The world faces four major problems — terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the movement of the centre of gravity from the Atlantic region to Asia and the impact of a globalised economy on the world order. The US and India have compatible, indeed overlapping, vital national interests in all four areas.”
If Henry Kissinger’s strategic framework reflected in this quotation is the best way to view US-India bilateral ties over the very long run, the subject of my speech today is shorter term in approach. I will look today at prospects for the Indo-American relationship in the next few years. Here is my headline in that regard. It will take very hard work and skillful diplomacy from both governments to keep the US-India relationship on its current plateau and to avoid a steady decline in our bilateral ties. I try to explain why in the rest of this presentation.
Let me stress that the Obama Administration in my view has an affirmative view of India. It admires India’s remarkable democracy. It is positively influenced by the Indian-American community whose political voice is growing in the United States. It hopes that India will become a partner on climate change and non-proliferation issues. It wishes to increase markedly the volume of US-India trade.
Thus, I take entirely at face value my old friend and Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg’s March 26 speech in which he said that “In the twenty-first century, the emergence of India as strong, stable, democratic and outwardly looking global player with global interests has the potential to enhance the effectiveness of the international system and the security and well-being of all, in a positive sum game,” and, “The real test of the relationship between the US and India will be how we work together on the great common challenges of our era – strengthening the global trade and investment system, addressing transnational threats like nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism and pandemic disease, and meeting the urgent danger that is posed by climate change.” In short, I believe the Obama Administration genuinely wants good relations with India and will work hard toward that end.
Having said that, I am concerned that there may be a substantial change underway in the quality and the intensity of US-India relations which goes counter to the good intentions of the two sides. Let me explain what I have in mind and what worries me.
President George W. Bush based his transformation of US-India Relations on the core strategic principle of democratic India as a key factor in balancing the rise of Chinese power. To be clear, this was not based on the concept of containing China. As you know, there is no better way to clear a room of Indian strategists than to advocate containing China. Rather, it centered on the idea that the United States and India in the decades ahead both had enormous equities in promoting responsible international policies on the part of China and that deep US-India bilateral cooperation in that respect was in the vital national interests of both countries. It was with this strategic paradigm in mind that the Bush Administration treated Indian with at least as much importance as China. For my analytical purposes here today, I am not saying whether this strategic approach regarding India and China on the part of the Bush Administration was right or wrong. There were critics of this approach, including my good friend Brent Scowcroft, who believes that such an Asian balance of power paradigm is both antique and dangerous in the current era. In any case, without this China factor at the fore in Washington, in my view the Bush Administration would not have negotiated the Civil Nuclear Agreement and the Congress would not have approved it.
At the same time, the long US-India negotiation on the civil-nuclear deal concentrated Washington minds on the bilateral relation and created over time strong relationships between the principal policy makers on the two sides. More important, it led to the de-hyphenization of US-India relations, separating India as a rising great power from India-Pakistan history and singularity, especially during George W. Bush’s second term.
Although it is certainly early days, there are preliminary indications that the Obama Administration has a different policy orientation towards India. First, it is not clear that the Obama Administration has the same preoccupation with the rise of Chinese power and India’s balancing role in it. Rather, Washington is now naturally focused on US-China economic relations, the G-2 as some analysts have named it, not least because of PRC holdings of US Treasury bonds and its major place in the world economy. So China today appears, at least to me, to be on a substantially higher plane in US diplomacy than India which seems to have been downgraded in Administration strategic calculations. Thank goodness the US-India 123 Agreement was completed because I am skeptical that it would have been successfully concluded under current conditions by this American Administration and Congress. In any case, there is no positive issue that I can see on the horizon that would have the same positive function and effects on US-India relations in the next several years as did the Civil Nuclear Agreement.
Moreover, I believe that it is fair to say that there is no one at the top of the Obama Administration who knows much about India. Let me stress this was also true in 2001 when the Bush team took office but they learned about India over the years for the reasons that I have suggested. By the same token, unsurprisingly there are now no close relationships between the policy makers in Washington and in New Delhi. This is nobody’s fault but just the way it is and as we know in life, unfamiliarity often breeds suspicion. Unfortunately, I do not see the evolution of events that would produce such policy intimacy between the two nations. At the same time, there are numerous issues that could cause a variety of problems in the US-India relationship in the next months and years.
This list obviously must begin with Pakistan. This is clearly the most serious issue between the United States and India. For every good reason, the Obama Administration is devoting enormous thought to Pakistan, since it is the most dangerous foreign policy problem that Washington presently faces. Indeed, in my judgment, the evolving situation in Pakistan is potentially the most dangerous international situation since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. As Vice President Biden has warned: “It is hard to imagine a greater nightmare for America than the world’s second-largest Muslim nation becoming a failed state in fundamentalists’ hands, with an arsenal of nuclear weapons and a population larger than Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea combined.” And President Obama deserves great credit for his April 29 statement that, “on the military side, you are starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally.” It has been many, many years since an American President has spoke so publicly, truthfully and bluntly to the leadership and people of Pakistan.
In my view, the United States has four vital national interests concerning what the Obama Administration calls AfPak, a holistic concept that unfortunately has been dear to the hearts of the Pakistan army for decades: 1) to prevent Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the possession of Islamic extremists; 2) to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for terrorists to launch attacks against the United States and its Allies and friends; 3) to avoid war between India and Pakistan; and 4) to prevent the Taliban and its radical collaborators from gaining control of Pakistan. Under the dynamic leadership of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke—relentless, experienced, charismatic as the New York Times accurately describes him, Obama policymakers are attempting to positively influence Pakistan where every single important trend that I can identify is negative and getting worse. Hats off to Ambassador Holbrooke and the Administration for their strategic thinking in seeing Pakistan as America’s most pressing important international problem and the one that currently poses the greatest threats to US vital national interests.
The Administration clearly has its work cut out for it. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen recent confirmed that elements of the ISI maintain links with extremists on Pakistan’s borders with both Afghanistan and India. General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, speaks of cases “in the fairly recent past” where the ISI appeared to have warned Jihadis that their positions had been discovered. And the New York Times recently pointed out that ISI support to Taliban commanders extends to “money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance”.
In addition, we all know of the spreading Wahabi-based fanaticism and violence inside Pakistan, away from the Taliban’s Pashtun mountain strongholds and into Punjab. The possible effect of such an enveloping US preoccupation with Pakistan seems on its way in practical terms to re-hyphenating the US-India relationship, leading the Administration to see India largely through the lens of deeply disturbing developments in Pakistan, at the expense of a focus on strategic cooperation writ large between Washington and New Delhi. This will produce an understandable and growing US interest in trying to reduce tensions in the India-Pakistan relationship, not least because Islamabad will speciously argue that tensions with India and the Kashmir dispute are preventing it from moving robustly against the Islamic terrorists within their midst. So India may well encounter eventual US pressure from on the subject of Kashmir. This would be ironic since the Indian Government reached through secret negotiations with General Musharraf a momentous breakthrough on Kashmir which alas did not survive Musharraf’s downward spiral and ultimate fall from power.
I strongly support the Administration’s efforts to internationalize the Pakistan problem and to bring to bear as many external resources and capabilities as possible to try to begin to improve the situation in Pakistan. However, it would be a mistake for Washington to treat India as mostly at the margin of US consideration of policy toward Pakistan, as a lesser player on issues related to the future of Pakistan. After all, it is India that is the object of Pakistan obsession, as President Obama pointed out. It is India that is continually attacked by terrorists based in Pakistan with the support of elements of the Pakistan military and today infiltration across the Line of Control is increasing. It is India that Pakistan claims is illegally occupying Kashmir. And it is only India that could again find itself at war with Pakistan, triggered by another Mumbai-like attack. So India is profoundly connected to the future of Pakistan, not on the periphery of it.
Let me make another point concerning Pakistan. Some Administration officials opine that the United States, India and Pakistan are now together in facing “a common threat, a common challenge, a common task”, in seeking to defeat Islamic terrorists based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Oh, if that were only so. But it is not. If you doubt me, please ask any member of the Pakistan army which has for three decades regarded Islamic terrorists as an abiding policy instrument against India and a crucial element in Pakistan’s enduring concept of strategic depth. These objectives are deep in ISI’s DNA and there is no magic wand available in Washington that will make that hard fact disappear. In short, there is no sign that the Government of Pakistan has made a fundamental national choice to seek to rid itself of Jihadism. Indeed, Secretary of State Clinton stated it well in April 23 testimony before the Congress, when she said that the Pakistan government “is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists.”
I conclude my remarks centered directly on Pakistan by observing that no one in Washington on either side of the political aisle has a set of penetrating prescriptions that promise to end the internal slide of Pakistan. (If I may say so, the same is true in India.) Conditioning military assistance on the Pakistan army acting vigorously against the Taliban and its allies should be a US requirement. Training the Pakistan army in counter-insurgency techniques makes sense. Working out joint management of Predator attacks would reduce the public outcry in Pakistan. Diversifying NATO supply routes into Afghanistan to avoid over-dependence on Pakistan would help. Staying out of Pakistan’s domestic politics is a must. Reducing the American public footprint in Pakistan would certainly be wise to try to deprive the Taliban of nationalist anti-foreign space. Attempting over the very long term to strengthen Pakistan civil society is a good Western investment.
But none of this gets in the next year or two at the fundamental problem. Islamic extremism is systemically on the rise in Pakistan and elites there—both civilian and military—do not appear to have the will or the means to resist. One, of course, urgently hopes that will change, but it is important to understand that US policy instruments are too weak to affect importantly these evolving and disturbing societal trends in Pakistan. Put another way, in my judgment, American policies cannot improve the current deteriorating internal situation in Pakistan. That is a preeminent task for Pakistanis. But maladroit US actions can make the situation in Pakistan worse.
This brings me to Afghanistan, which presents another set of potential differences between Washington and New Delhi. First, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is now commonly said in the US that NATO cannot win in Afghanistan as long as Taliban sanctuaries exist in Pakistan. But as George Friedman concludes, “While U.S. and NATO forces must rely on increasingly unreliable Pakistani supply routes to fight the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan — fearful that the United States and India will establish a long-term strategic partnership — has the incentive to keep the jihadist insurgency boiling (preferably in Afghanistan) in order to keep the Americans committed to an alliance with Islamabad, however complex that alliance might be.” One must then ask how likely is it that Islamabad and the Pakistan military will change its long-time policy approach to Afghanistan?
As you know, the Obama Administration has announced in detail its policies regarding the war in Afghanistan, a conflict that the United States and its Allies are not winning and may be losing. As Henry Kissinger has noted, “The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.” Perhaps with this in mind, President Obama has ordered the deployment of 21,000 US troops to Afghanistan, over and above the 40,000 already there. But he has made clear that in order to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban, America will have to embark on a long and expensive campaign of nation building in Afghanistan and solicit assistance and support from Afghanistan’s neighbors.
I applaud the emphasis that the Administration is now putting on preventing Afghanistan from once again becoming a sanctuary from which terrorists can plan and carry out attacks against the United States and its friends and Allies. Consistent with the German philosopher Nietzsche’s admonition that, “Man’s most enduring stupidity is forgetting what he is trying to do,” what we should be trying to do in Afghanistan is not, as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates stresses, attempting to make that country a modern democratic “Valhalla.” That goal is far beyond America’s and indeed the world’s capabilities.
The preeminent Australian expert David Kilcullen has an entirely different emphasis, “Counterinsurgency demands the continuous presence of security forces”; “local alliances and partnerships with community leaders; creation of self-defending populations”; and “operation of small-unit ground forces in tandem with local security forces.” In short, counterinsurgency does not require improved governance, not to say democratic practices, from the capital, a fundamental transformation that is highly unlikely in Afghanistan. Long distance American admonitions, no matter how well intentioned, will not change that Afghan reality. I will go even further. Any US strategy toward the Taliban that depends on substantially improved performance from the government in Kabul will fail.
Rather, the fate of Afghanistan one way or the other will be decided at the local and village level in the longer run by the competence and fighting spirit of the Afghan army and by economic development which ordinary Afghans can see and feel. Both these crucial projects will take several years at a minimum to accomplish and, therefore, Washington should stop talking about an exit strategy from Afghanistan. The only exit strategy available to the United States in the next year or two is defeat. I am convinced that the Obama Administration knows this to be true and for many reasons the US will not cut and run from Afghanistan as some in New Delhi’s salons seem to believe.
At the same time, it appears to me that India does not figure in an important way in US calculations regarding Afghanistan. Washington does not object to India’s economic development activities in Afghanistan, but is apparently sensitive to Islamabad’s complaints that India’s real objective in Afghanistan is to deprive Pakistan of the strategic depth that as I said a moment ago has preoccupied Pakistan military planners for decades. So the Administration may not give sufficient weight to India’s views regarding Afghanistan as say compared to those of Pakistan, the NATO Allies, Iran, China and Russia and seeks to limit the degree of Indian involvement in Afghanistan. This is especially odd given that according to polls, 74 per cent of Afghans see India favorably while 91 per cent of Afghans believe that Pakistan is playing a negative role in their country. For Washington to believe that India will not be a major player in the long-term future of Afghanistan is to ignore centuries of history, culture and mutual interaction between the two.
Finally, there is the notion emanating from Washington of so-called “reconciliation” with so-called “moderate” Taliban. This is a terrible idea, one of the very worst floating around Washington. Apart from the problem of defining the nature of an oxymoronic “moderate Taliban.” would such a “reconcilable” Taliban be against terrorism against India? Not likely. Moreover, under current conditions in Afghanistan in which NATO may be losing the war, such a move on Washington’s part could only be regarded by the resurgent Taliban as a serious sign of weakness and consequently fortify its will to win. As the great post-war Secretary of State Dean Acheson once trenchantly observed, “Negotiating … assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.” Who believes that concept currently applies to the Taliban? A moment may come in this long war when it will make sense for the United States to try to fracture the Taliban in Afghanistan by offering incentives to those willing to stop fighting. But that time, if it ever comes, would surely only be in the context of NATO succeeding militarily on the ground in Afghanistan, not before.
That brings us to Iran which is another knotty issue in US-India relations and a potential source of considerable bilateral tension. The Obama Administration is embarking on a diplomatic effort to persuade Tehran to suspend its nuclear weapons activities, a US initiative that all of us should applaud. However, this effort in my judgment has no chance of succeeding without a parallel strengthening of economic sanctions against Tehran. So it is just a matter of time before the US seeks to enlist India in applying a much more stringent sanctions regime concerning Iran, likely because of Russian opposition outside the legal authority of the UN Security Council. For many reasons with which you are all familiar, India is unlikely go along with such an American proposition.
China – It is not clear how Washington’s dominant preoccupation with economic cooperation with China will affect Indian Government calculations related to the US-India bilateral relationship and regional and Asian security. But if the US treats China in a privileged fashion and downgrades the quality of its substantive interaction with New Delhi, this is unlikely to produce spontaneous concessions from the Indian side on other matters of importance to Washington.
Nuclear Reprocessing and Civil-Nuclear Cooperation—Although it will undoubtedly be a tough negotiation, it seems likely that Washington and New Delhi will begin a reprocessing agreement this calendar year which would promote the sale of US nuclear reactors to India. Were that negotiation to break down, recriminations would surely fly from both capitals.
India’s Nuclear Weapons – There are a cluster of issues related to India’s nuclear weapons. The Obama team endorses both the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a freeze on the production of fissile material. Neither of these appears to be acceptable to the Indian Government today. President Obama is planning to put Vice President Biden in charge of what is expected to be the difficult job of getting the Senate to ratify the CTBT. Speaking recently, a senior Indian official said that India would not accept the CTBT because it “was not explicitly linked to the goal of nuclear disarmament.” Finally, it is not clear at least to me how the Obama team basically regards India’s nuclear weapons – as a destabilizing factor in South Asia; as a fact of life to grudgingly tolerate; or as a natural development from a close democratic collaborator and rising great power?
Climate Change – Secretary of State Clinton told delegates from 16 countries at a recent State Department conference on energy and climate that “The United States is fully engaged and determined to lead and make up for lost time both at home and abroad.” The Washington Post reports that “Days after the Obama administration unveiled a push to combat climate change, Indian officials said it was unlikely to prompt them to agree to binding emission cuts, a position among emerging economies that many say derails effective action.
“If the question is whether India will take on binding emission reduction commitments, the answer is no. It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce when 40 percent of Indians do not have access to electricity,” said a member of the Indian delegation to the recently concluded U.N. conference in Bonn, Germany, which is a prelude to a Copenhagen summit in December on climate change. Given how seriously the Obama Administration takes global warming, this issue risks being an increasing irritant in the US-India relationship.
WTO/Protectionism/H 1-B Visas—Despite appeals against trade protectionism, India imposed fresh tariffs on iron, steel and soybean oil in the early days of the financial crisis. Such a severe economic environment leads each country to fend for itself first — and India is no exception and neither is the most protectionist US Congress in many decades. In the same vein, President Obama’s stimulus package stops US companies, largely in banking and financial services, that take federal bailout money from hiring H-1B visa holders for two years if they have laid off American workers in the previous six months. The Administration has vowed to tighten restrictions and step up oversight of all work visa applications. These protectionist pressures are unlike to subside any time soon.
I have enumerated a whole host of potential and even likely problems in the US-India relationship in the next few years. In concluding, I would like to suggest what the United States and India should do in the period ahead to avoid systemic deterioration in our bilateral ties. Here are my personal policy prescriptions.
Pakistan –There should be intimate, intensive and utterly private US-India talks on how to deal with a turbulent and increasingly chaotic Pakistan in the period ahead, including examining the policy implications of various specific scenarios regarding deteriorating events in Pakistan. What seemed worst case a year ago in Pakistan may be on our mutual doorstep in the months ahead. I recognize that this is an exceptionally sensitive suggestion but it is absolutely necessary for a host of reasons, not least because it would be the United States and India that would be most affected by a Talibanisation of Pakistan. With that in mind, how can it be that we are not comprehensively and candidly talking together about it? Indeed, there may come a time if Pakistan continues its gradual descent into anarchy when the United States and India may be forced to adopt together, along with Iran and other nations, a strategy of attempting to quarantine the Wahabi infection as much as possible within Pakistan and to try to minimize its export.
Afghanistan – NATO is not currently winning the long war in Afghanistan. And the US, because of concerns in Islamabad, continues to find India more a liability than an asset regarding the future of Afghanistan. As an Indian friend said to me in 2002. “You Americans seem to think that Afghanistan is a scone, it is a baklava”. How prophetic he was. India will be a major player in Afghanistan whether the US likes it or not. That should be regarded in Washington as a positive factor as it seeks to reverse the problematical trends in Afghanistan and Washington should encourage India to enlarge its role in that country.
International Terrorism - This cluster of issues I have just mentioned is, of course, closely connected to the rise of Islamic extremism and the War on Terror. It is difficult to think of two countries outside of the Middle East that will be more strategically affected by this phenomenon than India and the United States. We talk far too little about this together, including what to say and do about it. In any case, Washington must not differentiate between “Bad Taliban” which kill American and “Good Taliban” which do not, but do mount attacks against India. Such a misguided US distinction would be poison for the US-India relationship.
Iran – In both countries there is considerable domestic political resonance and controversy surrounding this issue. It will not be diminished under the public spotlight. Washington needs to decisively accept India’s civilizational ties to Iran and act on that fact in American policies; and New Delhi needs to decisively accept and act in its policies on the fact that if Iran acquires a nuclear arsenal, it will dangerously disrupt regional and global equilibrium and be very bad for India over the long-term. I believe that the Obama Administration has it right in its approach to Iran. It is attempting to avoid a situation in 2010 or so in which the President faces essentially a binary choice regarding how to deal with Iran’s nuclear weapons program – either to launch a US military attack on those facilities with disastrous long term consequences, or to acquiesce to an Iranian nuclear weapons capability with disastrous long term consequences. So I believe that India should be far more forthcoming regarding much stronger international economic sanctions against Iran. That is the best hope for avoiding a catastrophe in the Middle East.
China – Again a delicate subject. But managing the rise of Chinese power is likely to be the most important strategic challenge for both countries in the next two decades. Containment is not an option but attempting together to shape Chinese policies in positive directions is. In particular, Washington should abandon any thoughts of a G-2. As former NSC Senior Director for Asia Dennis Wilder has written, “The G-2 moniker worries Asians… From Japan to India, there are concerns that America’s search for a solution to its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression may lead the Obama administration into not only expanded strategic economic and political dialogues with China but a full-blown strategic partnership. As the center of gravity of U.S. economic interests moves from Europe to Asia, they worry, the United States could become enamored of a “China first” approach.” This mistake must be avoided.
Civil Nuclear Cooperation – The two sides should initiate the US-India reprocessing agreement in the next six months. India should put aside any thought of renegotiating the 123 Agreement. If that Agreement is reopened, it will never be concluded.
Nuclear weapons – India should continue to cooperate closely with the US on non-proliferation and Washington should accept that India will mount a slow and modest upgrade of its nuclear arsenal in the years ahead. The United States should treat India as a nuclear weapons state. Any American backsliding in that regard would produce a very strong negative reaction from New Delhi.
Defense Cooperation – We need intensified interaction between the two militaries on military doctrine, force planning, weapons acquisition, interoperability, joint exercises, intelligence exchange, and threat assessments. In the next five years perhaps nothing would have such a positive long term impact on the bilateral relationship as India’s purchase of its next generation multi-role combat aircraft from the United States.
East Asia Security – Relations between India and Japan are improving. This is good for both countries and for the United States. These contacts should develop into governmental trilateral strategic discussions.
The Middle East – India has pervasive and growing vital national interests in the region but the two capitals mostly do not talk about it in a serious way. That should change.
Climate Change – The two sides should agree to disagree and not allow this issue to infect other dimensions of the bilateral relationship.
WTO – This may be in the too hard category given the differences between Washington and New Delhi but at a minimum both sides should drain the theatrics out of their exchanges on the subject.
US-India bilateral trade – Given the many challenges to bilateral relationship ties that I have discussed today, US-India trade and investment in the next few years is more important than ever. Indeed, it can have a salutary effect on the other aspects of the relationship. So I strongly encourage CII and the Indian business to intensify their engagement with American counterparts.
I would like to end my presentation as I began it, by expressing optimism with regard to the long-term prospects for the US-India relationship. The combination of our largely overlapping vital national interests and shared democratic values should produce a bright future for strategic collaboration between New Delhi and Washington in future decades. But in the immediate period before us, our bilateral ties are likely to be more problematical than we have seen in recent years. I want to stress that there is nothing inevitable about this. The two governments through their respective policies can avoid a downturn in our bilateral interaction and I, of course, hope that is what they will do. Ralph Waldo Emerson may have been overdoing it a bit when he asserted that, “There is properly no history, only biography.” But he is right that the individual leaders at the top of our two governments, beginning with the American President and Indian Prime Minister, will have a determining impact on the near-term outlook for US-India relations. We wish them well.
Ambassador Blackwill is former US Ambassador to India, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning and Presidential Envoy to Iraq. He is currently Senior Fellow at the RAND Corporation. His speech reflects his personal views.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Think out side the Box
Think Outside the Box -
correction; Think outside the "space-time" BOX (also know as space-time continuum.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Star Trek's Warp Drive: Not Impossible
Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
SPACE.com clara Moskowitz
staff Writer
space.com Wed May 6, 10:04 am ET
The warp drive, one of Star Trek's hallmark inventions, could someday become science instead of science fiction.
Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.
The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity.
Luckily for us, this speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). While any given object can't travel faster than light speed within space-time, theory holds, perhaps space-time itself could travel.
"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."
Already happened?
One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang.
"If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.
To make the technique feasible, scientists will have to think of some creative new means of propulsion to move space-time rather than a spaceship.
According to General Relativity, any concentration of mass or energy warps space-time around it (by this reasoning, gravity is simply the curvature of space-time that causes smaller masses to fall inward toward larger masses).
So perhaps some unique geometry of mass or exotic form of energy can manipulate a bubble of space-time so that it moves faster than light-speed, and carries any objects within it along for the ride.
"If we find some way to alter the properties of space-time in an imbalanced fashion, so behind the spacecraft it's doing one thing and in front of it it's doing something else, will then space-time push on the craft and move it?" Millis said. This idea was first proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre.
In the lab
Already some studies have claimed to find possible signatures of moving space-time. For example, scientists rotated super-cold rings in a lab. They found that still gyroscopes placed above the rings seem to think they themselves are rotating simply because of the presence of the spinning rings beneath. The researchers postulated that the ultra-cold rings were somehow dragging space-time, and the gyroscope was detecting the effect.
Other studies found that the region between two parallel uncharged metal plates seems to have less energy than the surrounding space. Scientists have termed this a kind of "negative energy," which might be just the thing needed to move space-time.
The catch is that massive amounts of this negative energy would probably be required to warp space-time enough to transport a bubble faster than light speed. Huge breakthroughs will be needed not just in propulsion but in energy. Some experts think harnessing the mysterious force called dark energy — thought to power the acceleration of the universe's expansion — could provide the key.
Even though it's a far cry between these preliminary lab results and actual warp drives, some physicists are optimistic.
"We still don't even know if those things are possible or impossible, but at least we've progressed far enough to where there are things that we can actually research to chip away at the unknowns," Millis told SPACE.com. "Even if they turn out to be impossible, by asking these questions, we're likely to discover things that otherwise we might overlook."
correction; Think outside the "space-time" BOX (also know as space-time continuum.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Star Trek's Warp Drive: Not Impossible
Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
SPACE.com clara Moskowitz
staff Writer
space.com Wed May 6, 10:04 am ET
The warp drive, one of Star Trek's hallmark inventions, could someday become science instead of science fiction.
Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.
The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity.
Luckily for us, this speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). While any given object can't travel faster than light speed within space-time, theory holds, perhaps space-time itself could travel.
"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."
Already happened?
One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang.
"If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.
To make the technique feasible, scientists will have to think of some creative new means of propulsion to move space-time rather than a spaceship.
According to General Relativity, any concentration of mass or energy warps space-time around it (by this reasoning, gravity is simply the curvature of space-time that causes smaller masses to fall inward toward larger masses).
So perhaps some unique geometry of mass or exotic form of energy can manipulate a bubble of space-time so that it moves faster than light-speed, and carries any objects within it along for the ride.
"If we find some way to alter the properties of space-time in an imbalanced fashion, so behind the spacecraft it's doing one thing and in front of it it's doing something else, will then space-time push on the craft and move it?" Millis said. This idea was first proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre.
In the lab
Already some studies have claimed to find possible signatures of moving space-time. For example, scientists rotated super-cold rings in a lab. They found that still gyroscopes placed above the rings seem to think they themselves are rotating simply because of the presence of the spinning rings beneath. The researchers postulated that the ultra-cold rings were somehow dragging space-time, and the gyroscope was detecting the effect.
Other studies found that the region between two parallel uncharged metal plates seems to have less energy than the surrounding space. Scientists have termed this a kind of "negative energy," which might be just the thing needed to move space-time.
The catch is that massive amounts of this negative energy would probably be required to warp space-time enough to transport a bubble faster than light speed. Huge breakthroughs will be needed not just in propulsion but in energy. Some experts think harnessing the mysterious force called dark energy — thought to power the acceleration of the universe's expansion — could provide the key.
Even though it's a far cry between these preliminary lab results and actual warp drives, some physicists are optimistic.
"We still don't even know if those things are possible or impossible, but at least we've progressed far enough to where there are things that we can actually research to chip away at the unknowns," Millis told SPACE.com. "Even if they turn out to be impossible, by asking these questions, we're likely to discover things that otherwise we might overlook."
Monday, May 4, 2009
Follow the DREAMS -
Stop making excuses and get started
By Luke Johnson
Published: April 28 2009 22:00 | Last updated: April 28 2009 22:00
In my travels, I meet quite a few would-be entrepreneurs. Some of these characters have a vision of starting or buying a business, but always seem to find reasons to do nothing. Their excuses as to why they have not created an enterprise sound convincing, but in truth none of them really stands up to close examination.
First on the list tends to be a lack of capital. There are lots of solutions to this one. My first business, when I was 18, was a venture with an Oxford nightclub where student friends and I promoted themed evenings and took the door money, while the venue owners kept the bar takings. The operation needed no capital at all – always the best type for absolute beginners.
Other situations may need some funding, but often less than founders think. I am often impressed at how first-time restaurateurs seem to fit out premises on a shoestring – using second-hand equipment, helping out themselves with the refurbishment and so on.
Most things can be done on a budget if your life’s dream depends on it. And even now there is equity backing out there. There are all sorts of pockets of institutional and private cash for a sound project, from government agencies to angel investors. It has never been easy to tap these sources of finance, so you need to be good – and persistent. Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, did more than 250 presentations to raise the early-stage funding to really kick-start his coffee bar chain.
A second imagined obstacle is income: people get addicted to a nice safe salary as an employee, and are unwilling to give it up for the uncertainties of the entrepreneurial life. It is true that plenty of the self-employed earn less than they would working for others – and may put in longer hours. But they do it because of the freedom and fulfilment it brings – and because they refuse to give up on their hopes.
Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, did more than 250 presentations to raise the early-stage funding to really kick-start his coffee bar chain
During my early 20s I took little time off – when I wasn’t working for others, I ran sideline businesses at weekends and during holidays – until I felt able to finally break free and become a full-time entrepreneur. In some ways I wished I had not delayed, but had taken the plunge straight from university.
I accept that there are those who have heavy domestic responsibilities – a mortgage, family obligations and so forth. But anything really worth having requires sacrifice – do you want to deny yourself opportunities and live a life of regrets? Right now many are facing redundancy, so there may not be any salary coming in anyway – what have you got to lose?
A third reason is the idea: too many wannabe entrepreneurs are waiting for a breakthrough concept to arrive one day, fully formed and ready to launch. But capitalism is not like that.
Most new businesses do something pretty similar to many others – they provide familiar services or products, fulfilling a definite demand – with perhaps an incremental improvement. You do not need an earth-shattering invention to achieve success.
Those triumphs are rare, and usually happen after immense heartache. What you want is a solid proposition that generates sales and cash quickly, using the skills you already possess, with economics you understand, and serving a known market.
A fourth reason is risk aversion. Too many people fear failure more than they want to win. Of course, your start-up might prove a vain attempt at the prize, so you may lose money, time and pride. But 2009 is, in fact, a great time to fail. All around us companies and institutions are going wrong, including many of the world’s largest and grandest. Everyone who has achieved much has suffered setbacks. And you know what? No one really notices or cares. As Confucius said: “Our greatest glory lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”
I predict that many great companies will be started in the next year or two, by those brave enough to believe in the future, energetic enough to seize the day and optimistic enough to deny the possibility of defeat.
There is never a perfect time to begin the journey. But if you have ambition and are willing to apply the effort, stop making excuses – get out there and start battling.
lukej@riskcapitalpartners.co.uk
The writer is chairman of Channel 4 and runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
By Luke Johnson
Published: April 28 2009 22:00 | Last updated: April 28 2009 22:00
In my travels, I meet quite a few would-be entrepreneurs. Some of these characters have a vision of starting or buying a business, but always seem to find reasons to do nothing. Their excuses as to why they have not created an enterprise sound convincing, but in truth none of them really stands up to close examination.
First on the list tends to be a lack of capital. There are lots of solutions to this one. My first business, when I was 18, was a venture with an Oxford nightclub where student friends and I promoted themed evenings and took the door money, while the venue owners kept the bar takings. The operation needed no capital at all – always the best type for absolute beginners.
Other situations may need some funding, but often less than founders think. I am often impressed at how first-time restaurateurs seem to fit out premises on a shoestring – using second-hand equipment, helping out themselves with the refurbishment and so on.
Most things can be done on a budget if your life’s dream depends on it. And even now there is equity backing out there. There are all sorts of pockets of institutional and private cash for a sound project, from government agencies to angel investors. It has never been easy to tap these sources of finance, so you need to be good – and persistent. Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, did more than 250 presentations to raise the early-stage funding to really kick-start his coffee bar chain.
A second imagined obstacle is income: people get addicted to a nice safe salary as an employee, and are unwilling to give it up for the uncertainties of the entrepreneurial life. It is true that plenty of the self-employed earn less than they would working for others – and may put in longer hours. But they do it because of the freedom and fulfilment it brings – and because they refuse to give up on their hopes.
Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, did more than 250 presentations to raise the early-stage funding to really kick-start his coffee bar chain
During my early 20s I took little time off – when I wasn’t working for others, I ran sideline businesses at weekends and during holidays – until I felt able to finally break free and become a full-time entrepreneur. In some ways I wished I had not delayed, but had taken the plunge straight from university.
I accept that there are those who have heavy domestic responsibilities – a mortgage, family obligations and so forth. But anything really worth having requires sacrifice – do you want to deny yourself opportunities and live a life of regrets? Right now many are facing redundancy, so there may not be any salary coming in anyway – what have you got to lose?
A third reason is the idea: too many wannabe entrepreneurs are waiting for a breakthrough concept to arrive one day, fully formed and ready to launch. But capitalism is not like that.
Most new businesses do something pretty similar to many others – they provide familiar services or products, fulfilling a definite demand – with perhaps an incremental improvement. You do not need an earth-shattering invention to achieve success.
Those triumphs are rare, and usually happen after immense heartache. What you want is a solid proposition that generates sales and cash quickly, using the skills you already possess, with economics you understand, and serving a known market.
A fourth reason is risk aversion. Too many people fear failure more than they want to win. Of course, your start-up might prove a vain attempt at the prize, so you may lose money, time and pride. But 2009 is, in fact, a great time to fail. All around us companies and institutions are going wrong, including many of the world’s largest and grandest. Everyone who has achieved much has suffered setbacks. And you know what? No one really notices or cares. As Confucius said: “Our greatest glory lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”
I predict that many great companies will be started in the next year or two, by those brave enough to believe in the future, energetic enough to seize the day and optimistic enough to deny the possibility of defeat.
There is never a perfect time to begin the journey. But if you have ambition and are willing to apply the effort, stop making excuses – get out there and start battling.
lukej@riskcapitalpartners.co.uk
The writer is chairman of Channel 4 and runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
MBA Teaching in India - need systemic change
Class of 2009' learns to Teach For India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/Class-of-2009-learns-to-Teach-For-India/articleshow/4484065.cms
PUNE: When Rachita Parekh was teaching at a business school in Pune, she was appalled at the lack of logic students displayed even at the post graduate level. However, she realised that the problem was not with the students but with the system of teaching in India. That was when she decided to join the Teach for India programme.
Rachita is one of the 80-odd fellows who have been selected for Teach for India a programme which seeks to bring equity in education which was launched in a grand event on Monday at the Symbiosis campus in Vimannagar.
It was the first time that the selected fellows for the class of 2009 came together with their parents, relatives and friends to witness the launch. The first day of the pre-service training for the Teach for India movement was held on Monday. This five-week full-time training aims at equipping fellows to learn the keys to excellent teaching and leading, which they will then apply over the next two years in classrooms in Mumbai and Pune.
Addressing the gathered fellows, Shaheen Mistri, chief executive officer, Teach for India said, "There is not a single doubt that all the individuals gathered here will bring about a change in the system. The class of 2009 consists of individuals from top campuses and companies with multiple options but, I'm glad that all of you chose to join the Teach for India movement."
Teach For India is a national programme that aims to narrow the educational gap in India by placing India's most outstanding college graduates and young professionals, of all academic majors and career interests, in low-income schools to teach for two years.
Anu Aga, board member, Teach for India said, "This movement will fulfil the needs of India. These fellows will be transformed through the experience of teaching. I'm sure these fellows will overhaul the education system in the coming years."
The fellows were selected from over 2,000 applications from across the country and abroad who underwent a rigorous three-step selection process and finally the class of 2009 was formed. After the pre-service training, the fellows will be placed in municipal and low-income schools wherein they will impart knowledge.
Gaurav Singh, another fellow selected for the Teach for India movement said, "I'm here for a dream. When I was small I was told stories of the golden bird. But, I don't want to tell stories of the golden bird to my kids, I want to show them the golden bird. People say that I've taken a great step by joining this movement as it will add to my profile for my masters degree. But I'm not here to build my profile, but to change the system and create a better future."
The fellows will get an opportunity to build personal and professional relationships with others in the programme, who have diverse academic and professional backgrounds, a common history of success and a unifying commitment to ending educational inequity.
Barun Mohanty of Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the co-founder of teach for India said, "This movement perfectly fitted with out aim to transform lives of the urban poor by providing better education hence we came together."
A small interaction session with the fellows and the parents and relatives and friends took place which was followed by a small introduction of all the fellows. Girish Bhakoo, another board member, Teach for India, said, "There will be many challenges for these fellows in the coming two years, but I'm sure they will lead by example and will make a great difference."
The fellows were presented with a pin-wheel even as all the 80-odd individuals gathered on stage to mark the closing of the event.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/Class-of-2009-learns-to-Teach-For-India/articleshow/4484065.cms
PUNE: When Rachita Parekh was teaching at a business school in Pune, she was appalled at the lack of logic students displayed even at the post graduate level. However, she realised that the problem was not with the students but with the system of teaching in India. That was when she decided to join the Teach for India programme.
Rachita is one of the 80-odd fellows who have been selected for Teach for India a programme which seeks to bring equity in education which was launched in a grand event on Monday at the Symbiosis campus in Vimannagar.
It was the first time that the selected fellows for the class of 2009 came together with their parents, relatives and friends to witness the launch. The first day of the pre-service training for the Teach for India movement was held on Monday. This five-week full-time training aims at equipping fellows to learn the keys to excellent teaching and leading, which they will then apply over the next two years in classrooms in Mumbai and Pune.
Addressing the gathered fellows, Shaheen Mistri, chief executive officer, Teach for India said, "There is not a single doubt that all the individuals gathered here will bring about a change in the system. The class of 2009 consists of individuals from top campuses and companies with multiple options but, I'm glad that all of you chose to join the Teach for India movement."
Teach For India is a national programme that aims to narrow the educational gap in India by placing India's most outstanding college graduates and young professionals, of all academic majors and career interests, in low-income schools to teach for two years.
Anu Aga, board member, Teach for India said, "This movement will fulfil the needs of India. These fellows will be transformed through the experience of teaching. I'm sure these fellows will overhaul the education system in the coming years."
The fellows were selected from over 2,000 applications from across the country and abroad who underwent a rigorous three-step selection process and finally the class of 2009 was formed. After the pre-service training, the fellows will be placed in municipal and low-income schools wherein they will impart knowledge.
Gaurav Singh, another fellow selected for the Teach for India movement said, "I'm here for a dream. When I was small I was told stories of the golden bird. But, I don't want to tell stories of the golden bird to my kids, I want to show them the golden bird. People say that I've taken a great step by joining this movement as it will add to my profile for my masters degree. But I'm not here to build my profile, but to change the system and create a better future."
The fellows will get an opportunity to build personal and professional relationships with others in the programme, who have diverse academic and professional backgrounds, a common history of success and a unifying commitment to ending educational inequity.
Barun Mohanty of Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the co-founder of teach for India said, "This movement perfectly fitted with out aim to transform lives of the urban poor by providing better education hence we came together."
A small interaction session with the fellows and the parents and relatives and friends took place which was followed by a small introduction of all the fellows. Girish Bhakoo, another board member, Teach for India, said, "There will be many challenges for these fellows in the coming two years, but I'm sure they will lead by example and will make a great difference."
The fellows were presented with a pin-wheel even as all the 80-odd individuals gathered on stage to mark the closing of the event.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Job Interviw
You only have one chance to make a good first impression, and you only have a few minutes to do just that in a job interview.
According to a Robert Half International (RHI) survey of 150 senior executives at the nation's 1,000 largest companies, hiring managers form either a positive or negative opinion of job candidates within just 10 minutes.
Brandi Britton, senior regional vice president with RHI, says, "Your behavior may be under scrutiny from the moment you arrive for the interview." Use these tips from Britton and other career and job-search gurus to make sure you wow them from the minute you walk in the room.
1. "A firm, non-sweaty handshake, eye contact, and a nice smile make you seem likeable. Likeable people are hired most often."
-- David Lewis, an executive with Express Employment Professionals and an expert on career development
2. "Prepare to engage in small talk, which helps to break the ice and puts both parties at ease and also demonstrates your ability to make conversation with potential clients, coworkers, and executives."
-- Brandi Britton, Robert Half International
3. "Be prepared with everything you can possibly know about the company and the person who is doing the interview."
-- Executive coach Beth Ross
4. "Don't take the head of a table or sit down until you are invited to do so to demonstrate how you'll behave in professional situations."
-- Patty DeDominic, cofounder of DeDominic & Associates, a professional coaching and business services firm
5. "Open with penetrating questions that prove beyond a doubt that you've done your homework on the company, the position, the department, the industry, and/or the competition."
-- Ford Myers, author of "Get the Job You Want Even When No One's Hiring"
6. "Practice your answers to commonly asked interview questions so that you come across as a well-prepared candidate."
-- Certified executive career coach Cheryl Palmer, Calltocareer.com
7. "If asked to talk about yourself, always answer from a professional sense. Telling people about your family and what you do on the weekends is definitely the wrong approach. You want to solely focus on the areas of your work in which you are most effective and productive."
-- Careers and resume expert Lauren Milligan, Resumayday.com.
8. "Become an object of interest by the questions you ask! Leave them wanting more with the quality of content you add to the conversation (versus noise)."
-- David Nour, consultant and author of "Relationship Economics"
9. "Mirror the body language of the interviewer. If they are leaning forward, you should be doing the same. This builds rapport on a sub-conscious level, giving the feeling of a deeper connection."
-- Job market expert Jabez LaBret, ThawingtheJobMarket.com
10. "Your interview strategy must include proof that you have successfully completed job-relevant tasks. A good strategy is to marry a strength and a specific example to prove that you are accomplished at what you do. Quantify accomplishments using numbers, percentages, and dollars whenever possible."
-- Barbara Safani, president, CareerSolvers.com
Education - MBA in India-school
*India's Business Schools Out of Date
*Grads Return to Build Up Skills for Fast-Changing Economy
By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 3, 2009
NEW DELHI -- Barely eight months after leaving prestigious Delhi University
with an undergraduate degree in commerce, Reena Dubey is back in the
classroom, poring over a textbook on debt recovery and taking notes on
India's banking industry.
"I studied economics, accounting, trade, corporate tax planning and
industrial law for three years. But I was still clueless when I graduated,"
said Dubey, 22. "All my education was bookish and theoretical."
Hoping to secure an entry-level job as a credit-card collection agent, Dubey
enrolled this month in a skills-building course offered by New Delhi's
Avsarr training academy for new graduates who want to work in India's
booming banking and retail industries.
"India's job market has changed, but my degree has not equipped me for it,"
she said.
Dubey's deflating discovery mirrors the experience of most of the 3.2
million Indians who receive undergraduate degrees each year. The
Confederation of Indian Industry says that 25 percent of technical graduates
and 15 percent of other graduates can be readily employed in the jobs that
the recent boom has generated in telecommunications, banking, retail, health
care and information technology.
"The stark reality is that our education system churns out people, but
industry does not find them useful," said T.K.A. Nair, principal secretary
to the prime minister, addressing a recent New Delhi conference on linking
education to employability. "The necessary development of skills is missing
in our education."
About 69 percent of unemployed Indians are educated but lack skills,
according to the Confederation of Indian Industry. Only 6 percent of the
workforce has a professional certification other than a degree, a figure the
Labor Ministry says it hopes to boost to 12 percent within five years. In
February, the government announced an ambitious plan to address the skills
gap by improving vocational training and encouraging cooperation between
educational institutions and industry.
The problem is compounded by demographic changes that experts say will
greatly expand the country's working-age population in coming years.
Today, about 54 percent of Indians are younger than 30. Census projections
suggest that the proportion of Indians in the 15-to-64 age group will
increase steadily, from 62.9 percent in 2006 to 68.4 percent in 2026. By
2020, the average age in India is expected to be 31, compared with 37 in
China< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/china.h tml?nav=el>and
48 in
Japan< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/japan.h tml?nav=el>.
Census reports say that India is entering the advantageous "demographic
dividend" phase just as China leaves it.
In a report last year, however, the Finance Ministry said that if that
growing workforce does not develop skills soon, the country could instead
face "a demographic nightmare": a surplus of educated people and a shortage
of qualified workers as labor requirements continue to shift from
agriculture to industry.
"This is the biggest wake-up call for India. Our schools and colleges do not
provide the skills that India's new economic drive demands," said Amit
Kapoor, a professor at the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon, near
New Delhi. "People are graduating without learning how to get things done,
without complex problem-solving skills, without knowing how to put their
theoretical education into practice, and with poor articulacy. Our schools
are centers of rote learning and give out degrees without imparting
employable skills."
The problem extends even to India's much-hyped engineering graduates, who
have been the backbone of the country's booming outsourcing industry in the
past decade.
Every year, India produces about 650,000 engineers. But Pratik Kumar,
executive vice president for human resources at the information-technology
and outsourcing giant Wipro, says his company considers fewer than a quarter
of them employable.
"The biggest problem is the poor quality of teachers," he said. "The
teaching profession is unable to attract good talent. It is often the last
resort for people who could not make it elsewhere."
In the past three years, Wipro has created several funds to finance grants,
research scholarships and sabbaticals for teachers in engineering schools.
"This is not philanthropy," Kumar said. "If we don't do this now, it will
hinder the future growth of our industry."
According to a recently released report by the Confederation of Indian
Industry and the research group Technopak, "most industries are struggling
to achieve their growth targets because of a shortage of skilled labor." The
report says some companies have begun hiring skilled blue-collar workers
from abroad and recommends the creation of "skill councils" for different
industries that would track data, set standards and design training
curricula.
But there is a cultural barrier to overcome, as well.
When the Confederation of Indian Industry set out a few years ago to make
India the "skill capital of the world," it found that the word "skill" was
frowned upon by many educated Indians.
"It is associated with low-level jobs in people's minds. 'Skill' is not
meant for educated persons," said Vijay Thadani, who chairs the group's
national committee on education. "We have to change that perception, to
bring social acceptability and recognition to the word. We keep repeating
that skill is a bankable, certifiable asset. Skill is currency."
*Grads Return to Build Up Skills for Fast-Changing Economy
By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 3, 2009
NEW DELHI -- Barely eight months after leaving prestigious Delhi University
with an undergraduate degree in commerce, Reena Dubey is back in the
classroom, poring over a textbook on debt recovery and taking notes on
India's banking industry.
"I studied economics, accounting, trade, corporate tax planning and
industrial law for three years. But I was still clueless when I graduated,"
said Dubey, 22. "All my education was bookish and theoretical."
Hoping to secure an entry-level job as a credit-card collection agent, Dubey
enrolled this month in a skills-building course offered by New Delhi's
Avsarr training academy for new graduates who want to work in India's
booming banking and retail industries.
"India's job market has changed, but my degree has not equipped me for it,"
she said.
Dubey's deflating discovery mirrors the experience of most of the 3.2
million Indians who receive undergraduate degrees each year. The
Confederation of Indian Industry says that 25 percent of technical graduates
and 15 percent of other graduates can be readily employed in the jobs that
the recent boom has generated in telecommunications, banking, retail, health
care and information technology.
"The stark reality is that our education system churns out people, but
industry does not find them useful," said T.K.A. Nair, principal secretary
to the prime minister, addressing a recent New Delhi conference on linking
education to employability. "The necessary development of skills is missing
in our education."
About 69 percent of unemployed Indians are educated but lack skills,
according to the Confederation of Indian Industry. Only 6 percent of the
workforce has a professional certification other than a degree, a figure the
Labor Ministry says it hopes to boost to 12 percent within five years. In
February, the government announced an ambitious plan to address the skills
gap by improving vocational training and encouraging cooperation between
educational institutions and industry.
The problem is compounded by demographic changes that experts say will
greatly expand the country's working-age population in coming years.
Today, about 54 percent of Indians are younger than 30. Census projections
suggest that the proportion of Indians in the 15-to-64 age group will
increase steadily, from 62.9 percent in 2006 to 68.4 percent in 2026. By
2020, the average age in India is expected to be 31, compared with 37 in
China< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/china.h tml?nav=el>and
48 in
Japan< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/japan.h tml?nav=el>.
Census reports say that India is entering the advantageous "demographic
dividend" phase just as China leaves it.
In a report last year, however, the Finance Ministry said that if that
growing workforce does not develop skills soon, the country could instead
face "a demographic nightmare": a surplus of educated people and a shortage
of qualified workers as labor requirements continue to shift from
agriculture to industry.
"This is the biggest wake-up call for India. Our schools and colleges do not
provide the skills that India's new economic drive demands," said Amit
Kapoor, a professor at the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon, near
New Delhi. "People are graduating without learning how to get things done,
without complex problem-solving skills, without knowing how to put their
theoretical education into practice, and with poor articulacy. Our schools
are centers of rote learning and give out degrees without imparting
employable skills."
The problem extends even to India's much-hyped engineering graduates, who
have been the backbone of the country's booming outsourcing industry in the
past decade.
Every year, India produces about 650,000 engineers. But Pratik Kumar,
executive vice president for human resources at the information-technology
and outsourcing giant Wipro, says his company considers fewer than a quarter
of them employable.
"The biggest problem is the poor quality of teachers," he said. "The
teaching profession is unable to attract good talent. It is often the last
resort for people who could not make it elsewhere."
In the past three years, Wipro has created several funds to finance grants,
research scholarships and sabbaticals for teachers in engineering schools.
"This is not philanthropy," Kumar said. "If we don't do this now, it will
hinder the future growth of our industry."
According to a recently released report by the Confederation of Indian
Industry and the research group Technopak, "most industries are struggling
to achieve their growth targets because of a shortage of skilled labor." The
report says some companies have begun hiring skilled blue-collar workers
from abroad and recommends the creation of "skill councils" for different
industries that would track data, set standards and design training
curricula.
But there is a cultural barrier to overcome, as well.
When the Confederation of Indian Industry set out a few years ago to make
India the "skill capital of the world," it found that the word "skill" was
frowned upon by many educated Indians.
"It is associated with low-level jobs in people's minds. 'Skill' is not
meant for educated persons," said Vijay Thadani, who chairs the group's
national committee on education. "We have to change that perception, to
bring social acceptability and recognition to the word. We keep repeating
that skill is a bankable, certifiable asset. Skill is currency."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)