Spread Democracy
Revolution
India has to get into the business of aggressively exporting democracy. That is the only way it can become America's number one ally in the world. That is the only way it can become a global superpower.
It is rather easy to do. You allow for the diaspora of the target country to work freely in your land, and you provide them with maximum moral and logistical support. When you can't do that directly, do it through the private and NGO sectors. China can't ask the Prime Minister of India to make an Indian CEO not give a million dollars to a Burma democracy group, for example. India is a free country. What if that CEO is a friend of the Prime Minister? And a friend of a friend of both delivered a secret, back channel message that the Prime Minister would like it a whole lot if the CEO would pump the money. The reward would be a vacation together somewhere down the line.
For India to compete with China to try to please the thugs in Burma is stupid, it is insane, it is outlandish, it is hurtful, it is plain defeatist. That is to suggest the one party ideology in China and Burma are superior to the free ways of India. And when you put a bright guy like Manmohan Singh at the helm, India has shown a democracy can grow just as fast.
Burma is a total test case. India needs to rediscover its zeal for Suu Kyi that it had in the early 1990s. I propose nonviolent guerrilla warfare. You get the Burmese democracy activists super organized, you fund them to the hilt, and you let them loose upon the junta. A Burma that might receive active help from India to become a democracy is going to be a Burma that will be in the best economic interests of India once we attain victory. Suu Kyi as Prime Minister is going to remember her friends in need.
Spreading democracy is a science, it can work like clockwork. Burma and Zimbabwe are ripe targets. Let these two countries give reason for America and India to form a super partnership that brings not only the two governments, but also their private and NGO sectors together for the cause of democracy.
Millions of people coming out into the streets to shut the country down completely day after day until the junta gets out of power totally and unconditionally: that is the only way. Momentum has already been lost once, because the world only extended moral support. Sophisticated logistical support has to be provided. It is still not too late.
Let's not kid ourselves. Ultimately China itself is game. That country is going to have to become a federal, multi-party democracy of state funded parties. It does not have to become a democracy like America is today, but it will have to meet half way. Tibet is going to be a state in China like Texas is in America. Or maybe not Texas, that is not a great example.
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Burma: Time For All Out Sanctions By All Powers
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In Solidarity With The Burmese People
In The News
America's Strategic Opportunity with India: The New U.S.-India Partnership By Nicholas Burns Foreign Affairs The rise of a democratic and increasingly powerful India is a positive development for U.S. interests. Rarely has the United States shared so many interests and values with a growing power as we do today with India. By reaching out to India, we have made the bet that the future lies in pluralism, democracy, and market economics. ........ building a close U.S.-India partnership should be one of the United States' highest priorities for the future. ....... a unique opportunity with real promise for the global balance of power. ....... share an abundance of political, economic, and military interests ....... Our open societies face similar threats from terrorism and organized crime. ....... an instinctive mistrust of authoritarianism. ........ six in ten Indians view the United States favorably. ..... our fastest-developing friendship with any major country in the world. ....... explosion in private-sector ties, the greatest strength in the relationship ....... a growing U.S.-India campaign to promote stable, well-governed democracies around the world ........ can attain a true global partnership ....... put American and Indian principles and power together .... President Franklin Roosevelt had been an ardent champion of India's cause; many Americans saw the vision of the United States' separation from the British Empire reflected in the hopes and dreams of Indian freedom fighters. ........ large multiethnic, multireligious democracies. ....... collaborated on India's extraordinary "green revolution," which helped end India's famines; and rushed military assistance to India during its border war with China in 1962. ....... India's "Smiling Buddha" nuclear test in 1974 ...... recent dramatic strengthening of U.S.-India ties. ....... India's historic economic reforms of the early 1990s, led by Manmohan Singh, then finance minister and now prime minister, opened India to the global economy for the first time and catalyzed the extraordinary boom in private-sector trade and investment between the United States and India that continues today. ........ as the twenty-first century began, the global order started to undergo a tectonic shift, and India's emergence as a global force was obvious for all to see. ........ the greatest of globalization's challenges -- international drug and other criminal cartels, trafficking in women and children, climate change, and especially the rise of terrorism and its potential intersection with weapons of mass destruction -- ......... In this radically changed global landscape, the basic interests of India and the United States -- the world's largest democracy and the world's oldest -- increasingly converged. ......... India's May 1998 nuclear tests ...... 14 rounds of talks over two and a half years. Talbott's negotiations with Singh were Washington's first truly sustained strategic engagement with the Indian leadership. ......... jump-start their relationship in four strategic areas: civil nuclear energy, civilian space programs, high-tech commerce, and missile defense. ...... full civil nuclear cooperation with energy-starved India. ....... long and sometimes difficult negotiations. ...... For the first time in three decades, India will submit its entire civil nuclear program to international inspection by permanently placing 14 of its 22 nuclear power plants and all of its future civil reactors under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Within a generation, nearly 90 percent of India's reactors will likely be covered by the agreement. ......... a mark of U.S. respect for India. ....... U.S. firms to work with India to construct nuclear power plants to meet its need for electricity. ....... forced to dig deep into our reserves of creativity and tenacity ..... Afghanistan ..... has pledged over $750 million for reconstruction ....... cooperation between the United States and India in Afghanistan has been close and encouraging. ....... A considerable peace dividend awaits both India and Pakistan ....... we in Washington view its growing influence in the world as broadly congruent with U.S. interests. Both countries seek to promote democratic principles and institutions around the world because we know that stable democracies are largely peaceful and better able to manage the consequences of globalization. ......... it is hard to think of two other countries with as much at stake or as much to offer to global stability. ........ UN Democracy Fund in 2005 ...... active leaders in the Community of Democracies, a group of over 120 nations committed to assisting other countries on their path to democratization. ........ science, advanced information technologies, and health services. ........ realistically, guarding against undue optimism and excessive expectations ....... Differing histories, cultures, and geographies will make for a healthy but sometimes argumentative friendship. The United States and India will need to work together more effectively in four primary areas: military and intelligence, agriculture and education, energy and the environment, and freedom and democracy. ........ counter terrorism, drug trafficking, and nuclear proliferation ....... strengthen their military, intelligence, and law enforcement relationships ...... annual joint air force and naval exercises .... India's robust navy travels the sea-lanes linking the Middle East and Africa with East Asia ....... peacekeeping, an area in which India is a major global force. ....... terrorism is a central threat to both countries. ........ a second green revolution to help India's rural poor. ...... nearly 700 million of its citizens -- 25 percent of the world's poor -- live on less than $2 a day. ........ cold-storage facilities, supply chains, and food-processing technology ...... An Indian global trade policy that increases liberalization and stimulates significant and sustained trade in agriculture and manufactured goods would benefit all, and so would the opening of India's retail, banking, and insurance sectors. ....... more students from India at colleges and universities in the United States than there are students from any other country ........ Georgia Institute of Technology will open a campus in India ...... global climate change will be the most significant challenge of the future ....... increasingly dynamic, creative, and high-tech societies. ...... India, home to .. the world's most profitable wind energy company ........ Some of India's fellow nonaligned countries are among the world's most oppressive and antidemocratic regimes. India's defense of those countries in resolutions at the United Nations and its political and military cooperation with some of them -- most notably Burma -- is anachronistic. Burma is a cruel dictatorship ....... Indians will need to ask themselves if their civilizational link with the Iranian people shall be confused with support for the interests of the irresponsible theocratic regime in Tehran. ....... with other rising democracies, such as Brazil and Indonesia. ...... international institutions, including the UN, will need to adapt to permit a greater leadership role for a rising India. ...... the big breakthrough in U.S.-India relations was achieved originally by the private sector. ....... both governments are playing catch-up with the extraordinary business-led trade and investment growth of the last two decades ......... Boeing alone sold $11 billion worth of aircraft last year to India, one of the world's fastest-growing aviation markets. ...... General Electric houses its second-largest research center in Bangalore. A number of India's blue-chip companies -- in banking, pharmaceuticals, and information technology -- are listed on U.S. stock exchanges. ...... Microsoft's largest such enterprise outside of Redmond, Washington. ....... The virtual bridge between U.S. high-tech centers and the Hyderabad-Bangalore corridor in India is the most obvious example of the high-tech future. ...... more than one in seven start-ups in Silicon Valley is founded by an immigrant from India. ..... 2.5 million Indian Americans ...... the wealthiest and best-educated immigrant community in the country. ...... 720,000 Indian U.S. visa applications this year ...... the U.S. consulate in Chennai issues more U.S. visas for skilled workers (43,000 last year) than any other U.S. diplomatic post in the world ....... substantial contributions in both countries and across diverse fields. ....... Stanford graduates Sabeer Bhatia and Vinod Khosla founded Hotmail and Sun Microsystems ....... Yale graduate Indra Nooyi became the CEO of PepsiCo last year .... Harvard Business School graduate Rajat Gupta went on to head McKinsey worldwide. ...... astronaut Kalpana Chawla ....... The rise of a new U.S.-India strategic partnership over the last two decades is one of the most significant and positive developments in international politics. ....... Today there is more of a strategic upside to our relationship with India than there is with any other major power. ...... unique opportunity over the next generation to rewrite history as it ought to have been written in the first place: the world's oldest democracy will finally count the world's largest as one of its closest partners ....... the planet's future lies in pluralism, democracy, and market economics rather than in intolerance, despotism, and state planning.
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The Republicans' Big Senate Fear it has become irresistibly imaginable: the idea that Democrats might gain a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate after the 2008 elections. ...... five long-serving Senators recently announced their retirements ..... the G.O.P. has 22 seats up in 2008, while the Democrats must defend just 12 ....... Democrats have even latched on to the 60-seat dream as a fundraising tool. ....... if former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey decides to return to the political stage in his home state ...... Cook predicts a Democratic pickup of up to five seats with Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Maine ........ Minnesota, where the strongest Dem candidate appears to be comedian Al Franken. ...... The four — Maine's Susan Collins, New Hampshire's John Sununu, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Norm Coleman of Minnesota — are constantly on the spot, whether it's because of near-weekly votes on President Bush's strategy in Iraq or popular legislation to expand stem cell research and children's health care. The strategy has forced some defections, such as Collins and Coleman on Iraq and Sununu on children's health care. ........ Governor Jeanne Shaheen, who plans on tying Sununu to Bush as much as possible. "On the war, he's essentially voted with President Bush seven times now." There are some signs the strategy is working: Sununu is trailing Shaheen in most New Hampshire polls.
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