Der Spiegel Interview with Henry Kissinger

11/13/2014 05:47 PM

Interview with Henry Kissinger

'Do We Achieve World Order Through Chaos or Insight?'

Interview Conducted By Juliane von Mittelstaedt and Erich Follath

Henry Kissinger is the most famous and most divisive secretary of state the US has ever had. In an interview, he discusses his new book exploring the crises of our time, from Syria to Ukraine, and the limits of American power. He says he acted in accordance with his convictions in Vietnam.

Henry Kissinger seems more youthful than his 91 years. He is focused and affable, but also guarded, ready at any time to defend himself or brusquely deflect overly critical questions. That, of course, should come as no surprise. While his intellect is widely respected, his political legacy is controversial. Over the years, repeated attempts have been made to try him for war crimes.

From 1969 to 1977, Kissinger served under President Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, first as national security advisor and then as secretary of state. In those roles, he also carried partial responsibility for the napalm bombings in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos the killed or maimed tens of thousands of civilians. Kissinger also backed the putsch against Salvador Allende in Chile and is accused of having had knowledge of CIA murder plots. Documents declassified just a few weeks ago show that Kissinger had drawn up secret plans to launch air strikes against Cuba. The idea got scrapped after Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976.

Nevertheless, Kissinger remains a man whose presence is often welcome in the White House, where he continues to advise presidents and secretaries of state to this day.

Little in Kissinger's early years hinted at his future meteoric rise in American politics. Born as Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fürth, Germany in 1923, his Jewish family would later flee to the United States in 1938. After World War II, Kissinger went to Germany to assist in finding former members of the Gestapo. He later studied political science and became a professor at Harvard at the age of 40.

Kissinger recently published his 17th book, a work with the not exactly modest title "World Order." When preparing to sit down with us for an interview, he asked that "world order" be the topic. Despite his German roots and the fact that he reads DER SPIEGEL each week on his iPad, Kissinger prefers to speak in English. After 90 minutes together in New York, Kissinger says he's risked his neck with everything he's told us. But of course, a man like Kissinger knows precisely what he does and doesn't want to say.

SPIEGEL: Dr. Kissinger, when we look at the world today, it seems to be messier than ever -- with wars, catastrophes and chaos everywhere. Is the world really in greater disorder than ever before?

Kissinger: It seems that it is. There is chaos threatening us, through the spread of weapons of mass destruction and cross-border terrorism. There is now a phenomenon of ungoverned territories, and we have seen in Libya, for example, that an ungoverned territory can have an enormous impact on disorder in the world. The state as a unit is under attack, not in every part of the world, but in many parts of it. But at the same time, and this seems to be a paradox, this is the first time one can talk about a world order at all.

SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

Kissinger: For the greatest part of history until really the very recent time, world order was regional order. This is the first time that different parts of the world can interact with every part of the world. This makes a new order for the globalized world necessary. But there are no universally accepted rules. There is the Chinese view, the Islamic view, the Western view and, to some extent, the Russian view. And they really are not always compatible.

SPIEGEL: In your new book, you frequently point to the Westphalian Peace Treaty of 1648 as a reference system for world order, as a result of the Thirty Years' War. Why should a treaty dating back more than 350 years still be relevant today?

Kissinger: The Westphalian Peace was made after almost a quarter of the Central European population perished because of wars, disease and hunger. The treaty was based on the necessity to come to an arrangement with each other, not on some sort of superior morality. Independent nations decided not to interfere in the affairs of other states. They created a balance of power which we are missing today.

SPIEGEL: Do we need another Thirty Years' War to create a new world order?

Kissinger: Well, that's a very good question. Do we achieve a world order through chaos or through insight? One would think that the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the dangers of climate change and terrorism should create enough of a common agenda. So I would hope that we can be wise enough not to have a Thirty Years' War.

SPIEGEL: So let's talk about a concrete example: How should the West react to the Russian annexation of Crimea? Do you fear this might mean that borders in the future are no longer incontrovertible?

Kissinger: Crimea is a symptom, not a cause. Furthermore, Crimea is a special case. Ukraine was part of Russia for a long time. You can't accept the principle that any country can just change the borders and take a province of another country. But if the West is honest with itself, it has to admit that there were mistakes on its side. The annexation of Crimea was not a move toward global conquest. It was not Hitler moving into Czechoslovakia.

SPIEGEL: What was it then?

Kissinger: One has to ask one's self this question: Putin spent tens of billions of dollars on the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The theme of the Olympics was that Russia is a progressive state tied to the West through its culture and, therefore, it presumably wants to be part of it. So it doesn't make any sense that a week after the close of the Olympics, Putin would take Crimea and start a war over Ukraine. So one has to ask one's self why did it happen?

SPIEGEL: What you're saying is that the West has at least a kind of responsibility for the escalation?

Kissinger: Yes, I am saying that. Europe and America did not understand the impact of these events, starting with the negotiations about Ukraine's economic relations with the European Union and culminating in the demonstrations in Kiev. All these, and their impact, should have been the subject of a dialogue with Russia. This does not mean the Russian response was appropriate.

SPIEGEL: It seems you have a lot of understanding for Putin. But isn't he doing exactly what you are warning of -- creating chaos in eastern Ukraine and threatening sovereignty?

Kissinger: Certainly. But Ukraine has always had a special significance for Russia. It was a mistake not to realize that.

SPIEGEL: Relations between the West and Russia are tenser now than they have been in decades. Should we be concerned about the prospects of a new Cold War?

Kissinger: There clearly is this danger, and we must not ignore it. I think a resumption of the Cold War would be a historic tragedy. If a conflict is avoidable, on a basis reflecting morality and security, one should try to avoid it.

SPIEGEL: But didn't the annexation of Crimea by Russia force the EU and US to react by imposing sanctions?

Kissinger: One, the West could not accept the annexation; some countermeasures were necessary. But nobody in the West has offered a concrete program to restore Crimea. Nobody is willing to fight over eastern Ukraine. That's a fact of life. So one could say we don't have to accept it, and we do not treat Crimea as a Russian territory under international law -- just as we continued to treat the Baltic states as independent throughout Soviet rule.

SPIEGEL: Would it be better to stop sanctions even without any concessions from the Russians?

Kissinger: No. But I do have a number of problems with the sanctions. When we talk about a global economy and then use sanctions within the global economy, then the temptation will be that big countries thinking of their future will try to protect themselves against potential dangers, and as they do, they will create a mercantilist global economy. And I have a particular problem with this idea of personal sanctions. And I'll tell you why. We publish a list of people who are sanctioned. So then, when the time comes to lift the sanctions, what are we going to say? "The following four people are now free of sanctions, and the other four are not." Why those four? I think one should always, when one starts something, think what one wants to achieve and how it should end. How does it end?

SPIEGEL: Doesn't that also apply to Putin, who has maneuvered himself into a corner? Does he act out of weakness or out of strength?

Kissinger: I think out of strategic weakness masked as tactical strength.

SPIEGEL: What does that mean for any interaction with him?

Kissinger: We have to remember that Russia is an important part of the international system, and therefore useful in solving all sorts of other crises, for example in the agreement on nuclear proliferation with Iran or over Syria. This has to have preference over a tactical escalation in a specific case. On the one hand it is important that Ukraine remain an independent state, and it should have the right to economic and commercial associations of its choice. But I don't think it's a law of nature that every state must have the right to be an ally in the frame work of NATO. You and I know that NATO will never vote unanimously for the entry of Ukraine.

SPIEGEL: But we cannot tell the Ukrainians that they are not free to decide their own future.

Kissinger: Why not?

'The War Against IS Has Wide Public Support'

SPIEGEL: You're speaking like a superpower that is used to getting its way.

Kissinger: No, the United States cannot dictate, and the US should not try to dictate. It would be a mistake even to think it could. But in regards to NATO, the US will have one vote in a decision based on unanimity. The German chancellor has expressed herself in the same sense.

SPIEGEL: America is very polarized. The level of aggression in the political debate is extremely high. Is the superpower still even able to act at all?

Kissinger: I am worried about this domestic split. When I worked in Washington, political combat was tough. But there was much more cooperation and contact between opponents of the two big parties.

SPIEGEL: In last week's elections, President Obama lost his majority in the Senate as well.

Kissinger: Technically correct. At the same time, the president is freed to stand for what is right -- just as President Harry Truman did between 1946 and 1948, when he advanced the Marshall Plan after losing Congress.

SPIEGEL: The next presidential race will soon begin. Would Hillary Clinton make a good candidate?

Kissinger: I consider Hillary a friend, and I think she's a strong person. So, yes, I think she can do the job. Generally, I think it would be better for the country if there were a change in administration. And I think we Republicans have to get a good candidate.

SPIEGEL: In your book, you write that international order "must be cultivated, not imposed." What do you mean by that?

Kissinger: What it means is we that we Americans will be a major factor by virtue of our strengths and values. You become a superpower by being strong but also by being wise and by being farsighted. But no state is strong or wise enough to create a world order alone.

SPIEGEL: Is American foreign policy wise and determined at the moment?

Kissinger: We have the belief in America that we can change the world by not just soft power, but by actual military power. Europe doesn't have that belief.

SPIEGEL: The American public is very reluctant to be engaged and would like to focus on domestic affairs. Obama himself talks about "nation building at home."

Kissinger: If you look at the five wars America has fought since World War II, they all had large public support. The present war against the terror organization Islamic State has large public support. The question is what happens as the war continues. Clarity about the outcome of the war is essential.

SPIEGEL: Shouldn't the most important objective be the protection of suffering civilians in Iraq and Syria.

Kissinger: First of all, I don't agree that the Syrian crisis can be interpreted as a ruthless dictator against a helpless population and that the population will become democratic if you remove the dictator.

SPIEGEL: But the civilians are suffering, however you define it.

Kissinger: Yes, they are, and they deserve sympathy and humanitarian assistance. Let me just say what I think is happening. It is partly a multiethnic conflict. It is partly a rebellion against the old structure of the Middle East. And it is partly a sort of rebellion against the government. Now, if one is willing to fix all these problems and if one is willing to pay the sacrifices for fixing all these problems and if one thinks one can create something that will bring this about, then one can say, "We will apply the right to interfere," but that means military measures and willingness to face the consequences. Look at Libya. There's no question that it was morally justified to overthrow Muammar Gadhafi, but we were not willing to fill the vacuum afterwards. Therefore we have militias fighting against each other today. You get an ungoverned territory and an arms depot for Africa.

SPIEGEL: But we are seeing a similarly unbearable situation in Syria. The state is falling apart and terror organizations are ruling large parts of the country. Wasn't it perhaps wrong not to intervene in order to avoid chaos that now represents a threat to us as well?

Kissinger: In my life, I have almost always been on the side of active foreign policy. But you need to know with whom you are cooperating. You need reliable partners -- and I don't see any in this conflict.

SPIEGEL: As in the Vietnam War. Do you sometimes regret your aggressive policy there?

Kissinger: You'd love me to say that.

SPIEGEL: Of course. You haven't spoken much about it all your life.

Kissinger: I've spent all my life studying these things, and written a book about Vietnam called "Ending the Vietnam War" and many chapters in my memoirs on Vietnam. You have to remember that the administration in which I served inherited the war in Vietnam. Five hundred thousand Americans were deployed there by the Johnson Administration. The Nixon Administration withdrew these troops gradually, with ground combat troops being withdrawn in 1971. I can only say that I and my colleagues acted on the basis of careful thought. On the strategic directions, that was my best thinking, and I acted to the best of my convictions.

SPIEGEL: There is a sentence in your book, on the last page, that can be understood as a kind of self-criticism. You write that you once thought you could explain history, but that today you are more modest when it comes to judging historical events.

Kissinger: I have learned, as I wrote, that history must be discovered, not declared. It's an admission that one grows in life. It's not necessarily a self-criticism. What I was trying to say is you should not think that you can shape history only by your will. This is also why I'm against the concept of intervention when you don't know its ultimate implications.

SPIEGEL: In 2003, you were in favor of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. At that time, too, the consequences of that intervention were uncertain.

Kissinger: I'll tell you what I thought at the time. I thought that after the attack on the United States, it was important that the US vindicate its position. The UN had certified major violations. So I thought that overthrowing Saddam was a legitimate objective. I thought it was unrealistic to attempt to bring about democracy by military occupation.

SPIEGEL: Why are you so sure that it is unrealistic?

Kissinger: Unless you are willing to do it for decades and you are certain your people will follow you. But it is probably beyond the resources of any one country.

SPIEGEL: For this reason, President Obama is fighting the war against terror from the air using drones and warplanes in Pakistan and Yemen and now in Syria and Iraq as well. What do you think about that?

Kissinger: I support attacks on territories from which terrorist attacks are launched. I have never expressed a public view on drones. It threatens more civilians than the equivalent one did in the Vietnam War, but it's the same principle.

SPIEGEL: In your book you argue that America has to make its decisions about war on the basis of what achieves the "best combination of security and morality." Can you explain what you mean by that?

Kissinger: No. It depends on the situation. What is our precise interest in Syria? Is it humanitarian alone? Is it strategic? Of course, you would always want to achieve the most moral possible outcome, but in the middle of a civil war you cannot avoid looking at the realities, and then you have to make the judgments.

SPIEGEL: Meaning that for a certain amount of time, for realistic reasons, we could be on the side of Bashar Assad fighting Islamic State?

Kissinger: Well, no. We could never fight with Assad. That would be a denial of years of what we have done and asserted. But frankly, I think we should have had a dialogue with Russia and asked what outcome we want in Syria, and formulate a strategy together. It was wrong to say from the beginning that Assad must go -- although it is a desirable ultimate goal. Now that we are locked into that conflict with Russia, a deal regarding the Iranian nuclear program becomes more difficult.

SPIEGEL: Are you in favor of a more assertive role for Europe, especially for Germany?

Kissinger: Yes, certainly. A century ago, Europe almost had a monopoly in creating world order. Today, there is a danger it is just busy with itself. Today, Germany is the most significant European country and, yes, it should be much more active. I do have very high regard of Ms. Merkel, and I think she is the right person for leading Germany into this role. By the way, I've met and been sort of friendly with every German chancellor.

SPIEGEL: Oh, including Willy Brandt?

Kissinger: I have very high regard for Willy Brandt.

SPIEGEL: We're a bit surprised here because a few months ago, a conversation between you and Nixon was released in which you call Brandt a "dangerous idiot".

Kissinger: You know, these phrases out of context confuse the reality. Here are people at the end of an exhausting day saying things to each other, reflecting the mood of a moment, and it probably was during some difference of opinion which I don't even remember. We had some doubts about Brandt's Ostpolitik at the beginning, but later, we worked very closely with him. Ask Egon Bahr, he will tell you: Without the Nixon Administration, Brandt's Ostpolitik would not have achieved its objective, especially on the issue of Berlin.

SPIEGEL: In Germany, you are a very controversial politician. When the University of Bonn wanted to name a chair after you, the students protested. Were you disappointed, or at least irritated?

Kissinger: I appreciate the honor. I didn't ask for the chair, and I only became aware of the chair after it was established. I don't want to be part of the discussion, it's entirely up to German agencies. I think Germany should do it for itself or not do it for its own reasons.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Kissinger, we thank you for this interview.

URL:

         http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-henry-kissinger-on-state-of-global-politics-a-1002073.html

Related SPIEGEL ONLINE links:

         Unlikely Heir: Obama Returns to Kissinger's Realpolitik (05/22/2013)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/realpolitik-of-henry-kissinger-making-a-comeback-under-obama-a-901195.html

         From the Archive: SPIEGEL Interview with Henry Kissinger (07/06/2011)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-henry-kissinger-mao-might-consider-modern-china-to-be-too-materialistic-a-772292.html

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The New India by Arundhati Roy

The Minister says that for India’s sake, people should leave their villages and move to the cities. He’s a Harvard man. He wants speed. And numbers. Five hundred million migrants he thinks, will make a good business model.

Not everybody likes the idea of their cities filling up with poor. A judge in Bombay called slum dwellers pickpockets of urban land. Another said, while bulldozing of unauthorized colonies, that people who couldn’t afford to live in cities shouldn’t live in them.

When those who had been evicted went back to where they came from, they found their villages had disappeared under great dams and dusty quarries. Their homes occupied by hunger – and policemen. The forests were filling up with armed guerrillas. They found that wars from the edge of India, in Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, had migrated to its heart. People returned to live on city streets and pavements, in hovels on dusty construction sites, wondering which corner of this huge country was  meant for them.

The Minister said that migrants to cities were mostly criminals and “carried a kind of behavior which is unacceptable for modern cities.” The middle class admired him for his forthrightness, for having the courage to call a spade a spade. The Minister said he would set up more police stations, recruit more policemen, and put more police vehicles on the road to improve law and order.

In the drive to beautify Delhi for the Commonwealth Games, laws were passed to make the poor vanish, like laundry stains. Street vendors disappeared, rickshaw pullers lost their licenses, small shops and businesses were shut down. Beggars were rounded up, tried by mobile magistrates in mobile courts, and dropped outside the city limits. The slums that remained were screened off, with vinyl billboards that said DELHIciously Yours.

Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamount Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said. “Pay your respects to our new Ruler.”

Antilla belongs to India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I’d read about this most expensive dwelling ever built, the twenty-seven stories, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and six hundred servants. Nothing prepared me for the vertical lawn – a soaring, twenty-seven story wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches; bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, Trickledown hadn’t worked.

But Gush-Up certainly has. That’s why in a nation of 1.2 billion, India’s one hundred people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of the GDP.

The word on the street (and in the New York Times) is, or at least was, that after all that effort and gardening, the Ambanis don’t live in Antilla. No one knows for sure. People still whisper about ghosts and bad luck, Vastu and feng shui. Maybe its Karl Marx’s fault. (All that cussing) Capitalism, he said, “has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, that it is like a sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells.”

In India the 300 million of us who belong to the new, post-International Monetary Fund “reforms” middle class –the market – live side by side with the spirits of the netherworld, the poltergeists of dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains, and denuded forests; the ghosts of 250,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than twenty Indian rupees a day.

Mukesh Ambani is personally worth $20 billion. He holds a majority controlling share in Reliance Industries Limited, a company with a market capitalization of $47 billion and global business interests that include petrochemicals, oil, natural gas, polyester fiber, Special Economic Zones, fresh food retail, high schools,, life science research, and stem cell storage services. RIL recently bought 96 percent sharers in Infotel, a TV consortium that controls twenty-seven TV news and entertainment channels, including CNN-IBN, IBN Live, CNBC, IBN Lokmat, and ETV in almost every regional language. Infotel owns the only nation-wide license for 4G broadband, a high-speed information pipeline which, if the technology works, could be the future of information exchange. Mr. Ambani also owns a cricket team.

 RIL is one of a handful of corporations that run India .  .  . According to the rules of the Gush-Up Gospel, the more you have, the more you can have.

The era of Privatization of Everything has made the Indian economy one of the fastest growing in the world. However, as with any good old-fashioned colony, one of its main exports is its minerals. India’s new mega-corporations, Tatas, Jindals, Essar, Reliance, Sterlite, are those that have managed to muscle their way up to the head of the spigot that is spewing money extracted from deep inside the earth. It’s a dream come true for businessmen – to be able to sell what they don’t have to buy.

The other major source of corporate wealth comes from their land banks. All over the world, weak, corrupt local governments have helped Wall Street brokers, agribusiness corporations and Chinese billionaires to amass huge tracts of land. (Of course this entails commandeering water too.) In India the land of millions of people is being acquired and handed over to private corporations for “public interest” – for Special Economic Zones, infrastructure projects, dams, highways, car manufacture, chemical hubs, and Formula One racing. (The sanctity of private property never applies to the poor.) As always, local people are promised that their displacement from their land and the expropriation of everything they ever had is actually part of an employment generation. But by now we know the connection between GDP growth and jobs is a myth. After twenty years of ‘growth,” 60 percent of India’s workforce is self-employed, and 90% of India’s labor force works in the unorganized sector.

Post-Independence, right up to the 1980s, people’s movements, ranging from the Naxalites to Jataprakash Narayan’s Sampoorna Kranti, were fighting for land reforms, for redistribution of land from feudal landlords to landless peasants. Today any talk of redistribution of land or wealth would be considered not just undemocratic but lunatic. Even the most militant movements have been reduced to a fight to hold on to what little land people still have. The millions of landless people, the majority of them Dalits and Adivasis, driven from their villages, living in slums and shanty colonies in small towns and megacities, do not figure even in the radical discourse.

As Gush-Up concentrates wealth onto the tip of a shining pin on which our billionaires pirouette, tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy –the courts, the parliament –as well as the media, seriously compromising their ability to function in the ways they are meant to. The noisier the carnival around elections, the less sure we are that democracy really exists.

Each new corruption scandal that surfaces in India makes the last one look tame. In the summer of 2011 the  2G spectrum scandal broke. We learned that corporations has siphoned away $40 billion of public money by installing a friendly soul as the minister of communications and information who grossly underpriced the licenses for 2G telecom spectrums and illegally auctioned them to his buddies. The taped telephone conversations leaked to the press and showed how a network of industrialists and their front companies, ministers, senior journalists, and a TV anchor were involved in facilitating this daylight robbery. The tapes were just an MRI that confirmed a diagnosis that people had made long ago.

The privatization and illegal sale of telecom spectrum does not involve war, displacement, and ecological devastation. The privatization of India’s mountains, rivers and forests does. Perhaps because it does not have the uncomplicated clarity of a straightforward, out-and-out accounting scandal, or perhaps because it is all being done in the name of India’s “progress,” it does not has the same resonance with the middle classes.

In 2005 the state governments of Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Jdarkhand  signed hundreds of memorandums of understanding (MOU’s) with a number of private corporations, turning over trillions of dollars of bauxite, iron ore, and other minerals for a pittance, defying even the warped logic of the Free Market. (Royalties to the government ranged between 0.5 and 7 percent.)

Only days after the Chhattisgarh government signed an MOU for the construction of an integrated steel plant in Bastar with Tata Steel, the Saklwa Judum, a vigilante militias inaugurated. The government said it was a spontaneous uprising of local people who were fed up with “repression” by Maoist guerillas in the forest. It turned out to be a ground-clearing operation, funded and armed by the government and subsidized by mining corporations. In the other states similar militias were created, with other names. The prime minister announced the Maoists were the “Single Largest Security Challenge in India.” It was a declaration of war.

On January 2, 2006, in Kalinganagar, in the neighboring state of Orissa, perhaps to signal the seriousness of the government’s intention, ten platoons of police arrived at the site of another Tata Steel plant and opened fired on villagers who had gathered there to protest what they felt was inadequate compensation for their land. Thirteen people, including one policeman, were killed and thirty-seven injured. Six years have gone by, and though the villages remain under siege by armed policemen, the protest has not died.

Meanwhile in Chhattisgarh, the Salwa Judum burned, raped, and murdered its way through hundreds of forest villages, evacuating six hundred villages and forcing 50,000 people to come into police camps and 350,000 people to flee. The chief minister announced that those that did not come out of the forests would be considered “Maoist   terrorists.” In this way, in parts of modern India plowing fields and sowing seeds came to be defined as terrorist activity. Eventually the Salwa Judum’s atrocities succeeded only in strengthening the resistance and swelling the ranks of the Maoist guerilla army. Two hundred thousand paramilitary troops were deployed across Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, and West Bengal.

After three years of ‘low-intensity conflict” that has not managed to ‘flush’ the rebels out of the forest, the central government has declared that it will deploy the Indian army and air force. In India we don’t call this war. We call it “Creating a Good Investment Climate. Thousands of soldiers have already moved in. A brigade headquarters and airbases are being readied. One of the biggest armies in the world is now preparing its Terms of Engagement to “defend” itself against the poorest, hungriest, most malnourished people in the world. We only await the declaration of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which will give the army legal impunity and the right to kill “on suspicion.” Going by the tens of thousands of unmarked graves and anonymous cremation pyres in Kashmir, Manipur, and Nagaland, we might judge it to be a very suspicious army indeed.

While the preparations for deployment are being made, the jungles of Central India continue to remain under siege, with villagers frightened to come out or to go to market for food or medicine. Hundreds of people have been jailed, charged with being Maoists under draconian, undemocratic laws. Prisons are crowded with Adivasi people, many of whom have no idea what their crime is. . .

We hear about the ecological and social engineering of Central India only because of the mass insurrection and the war. The government gives out no information. The MOUs are all secret. Some sections of the media have done what they could to bring public attention to what is happening in Central India. However, most of the Indian mass media is made vulnerable by the fact that the major share of their revenues come from corporate advertisements. If that is not bad enough, now the line between the media and big business has begun to blur dangerously. As we have seen, RIL: virtually owns twenty-seven TV channels. But the reverse is also true. Some media houses now have direct business and corporate interests. For example, one of the major daily newspapers in the region, Dainik Bhaskar - and it is only one example – has 17.5 million readers in four languages, including Hindi, across thirteen states. It also owns sixty-nine companies with interests in mining, power generation, real estate, and textiles. A recent writ petition in the Chhattisgarh High Court accuses DG Power Ltd (one of the group’s companies of using “deliberate, illegal and manipulative measures” through company-owned newspapers to influence the outcome of a public hearing over an open cast coalmine. Whether or not it has attempted to influence the outcome is not germane. The point is that the media houses are in a position to do so. They have the power and the direct interests to do so. The laws of the land allow them to be in a position that lends itself to serious conflicts of interest.

There are other parts of the country from which no news comes. In the sparsely populated but militarized northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, 168 big dams are being constructed, most of them privately owned. High dams that will submerge whole districts are being constructed in Manipur and Kashmir, both highly militarized states where people can be killed for protesting power cuts. How can they stop a dam?

The most delusional dam of all is the Kalspar in Gujarat . . . the subject of serious concerns among scientists in a 2007 report. It has made a sudden comeback in order to supply water (though already a trickle in the river and poisoned with chemical effluent) to the Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR) in one of the most water-stressed zones not just in India but in the world. SIR is another name for a SEZ, a self-governed corporate dystopia of industrial parks, townships and megacities. The Dholera SIR is going to be connected to Gujarat’s other cities by a network of ten-lane highways. Where will the money for all this come from?

In January 2011 in the Mahatma (Ghandi) Mandir, Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi presided over a meeting of ten thousand international businessmen from one hundred countries. According to media reports, they pledged to invest $450 billion in Gujarat. The meeting was deliberately scheduled to take place on the tenth anniversary of the massacre of two thousand Muslims in February 2002. Modi stands accused of not just condoning but actively abetting the killing. People who watched their lived ones being raped, eviscerated, and burned alive, still wait for a gesture towards justice. But Modi has traded in his saffron scarf and vermillion forehead for a sharp business suit and hopes that a $450 billion investment will work as blood money and square the books. Perhaps it will. Big Business is backing him enthusiastically. The algebra of infinite justice works in mysterious ways.

The Dholera SIR is only one of the smaller Matryoshka dolls, one of the inner ones in the dystopia that is being planned. It will be connected to the Dehli Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), a 1,500-km-long and 300-km-wide corridor with nine mega-industrial zones, a high-speed freight line, three seaports, six airports, a six-lane intersection-free expressway, and a 4000 mw power plant. The DMIC is a collaborative venture between the governments of India and Japan and their respective corporate partners, and has been proposed by the McKinsey Global Institute.

The DMIC website says that approximately 180 million people will be “affected” by the project. Exactly how it doesn’t say. It envisages the building of several new cities and estimates that the population in the region will grow from the current 2312 million to 314 million by 2019. That’s in seven years time. When was the last time a state, a despot, or a dictator carried out a population transfer of millions of people? Can it possibly be a peaceful process?

The Indian army might need to go on a recruitment drive so that it is not taken unawares when it is ordered to deploy all over India. In preparation for its role in Central India, it publically released its updated doctrine of military psychological operations, which outlines “a planned process of conveying a message to a select target audience, to promote particular themes that result in the desired attitudes and behavior, which affect the achievement of political and military objectives of the country.” This process of “perception management,” it said, would be conducted by “using media available to the Services.”

The army is experienced enough to know that coercive force alone cannot carry out or manage social engineering on the scale that is envisioned by India’s planners. War against the poor is one thing. But for the rest of us – the middle class, whiter-collar workers, intellectuals, “opinion-makers” – it has to be “perception management.” And for this we must turn our attention to the exquisite art of Corporate Philanthropy.

Occidentosis by Jalal Ali-Ahmad

1962

Parties in a Western democratic society are forums to satisfy the melancholia of unbalanced and mentally ill people who through daily regimentation before the machine, rising punctually and arriving on time, not missing the train, have lost the chance to express any will of their own.

Whatever the nature of this catastrophe, they sort into three types of melancholia:

1      The melancholia of grandiosity. Every little man is led to see his own grandeur in those grandeurs that are (falsely) associated with him: in the grandeur of the nationalistic demonstrations, in exorbitant celebrations, in the arches of triumph aflutter with rags, in the jewels of the National Bank, in the trappings on the horses, in the fine uniforms of their riders, in the army commanders’ tassles, in the huge buildings, in the yet huger dams (much has been said  about the immense amounts of the nation’s capital wasted in building them) and, in sum, whatever is an eyeful, an eyeful for the little man so he will suppose himself great.

2.  The melancholia of glorying in the nation’s remote past.  Although this follows from the melancholia of grandiosity, it has more to do with the ear. You mostly hear this kind of melancholia manifested: asinine self-glorification, with plentiful references to Darius, Cyrus and Rustam, the sort of thing that pours from every radio in the country and from there fills our publications. This melancholia serves to fill the ears. Have you seen how a tired young worker walks down a lonely lane on the dark of night? He generally sings to himself because he is afraid to be alone. He fills his own ears with his voice and thus dispels his fear. The radio fulfills the same function, just to make some noise, to fill the ear.

      

 3.The melancholia of constant pursuit.  You create a new imaginary enemy for the hapless people every day; you stuff the radio and publications with news of him to frighten the people and reduce them ever more to a state of anxious brooding. You make them feel thankful for what they have. This constant pursuit takes numerous forms. One day a Tudeh network is exposed; the next day a war on opium is launched, then a war on heroin; then the Bahrayn situation flares up, or a dispute with Iraq over the Shatt al-Arab, then a kidnapping, then the dread of Savak they sow into people’s  hearts.

The fascist parties and other groups that are extremist in principle and rabid in practice take the greatest possible pains to cater to the diseased state of mind of such people: from choosing the reddest or red for their banners, to employing symbols and devices –eagles, lions, tigers – that are in reality the totems of twentieth century savagery, to adopting rituals for initiation into their circles and expulsions from them, to abiding by their own strange customs.

These are the problems of the advanced societies. But we –who haven’t a machine, who are not in an advanced society, who need not face these consequences, who are not compelled to make submissive, tractable, homogeneous people, who have no need for prefabricated heroes – make the same sort of heroes as we award prizes, elect representatives to the Majlis, elect some villager to recite poetry at a ceremony. Worst of all, we read on page one of  codified education programs about “cultivating the well-balanced individual” and such fatuities. Of course, it will be exclaimed that this is another symptom of occidentosis. But is it enough to name the sore?

If one can maintain a role for our educational system, it is to disclose outstanding personalities who, in the midst of this social disorder can actually lead the caravan somewhere. The aim of our educational system, such as it is, must not and cannot be to conventionalize, to uniformize, to homogenize people so that they will put up with the existing situation and come to terms with it. Especially for us, who live in this age of transformation and crisis and are undergoing this period of transition, it is only with the help of self-sacrificing, self-surpassing and principled people (who in the usage of pop psychology are termed antisocial, rigid and unbalanced) that the weight of this transformation and crisis may be borne and that the social disorder described in this work may be remedied.