Who should define the “New World Order”?

Barack Obama? He is a classical liberal who grew up moralizing complex problems and dreaming of a perfect world. The United States of America considers itself the only remaining superpower in the world and yet is unable to find a solution to any global problem. The current trip of President Obama to Russia is a perfect example of such naiveté. He believes that a bilateral arms agreement between the United States and Russia would lead to some form of global disarmament! This kind of utopian goal was possible during 1980s and not beyond that. The reason for such a dilemma arises from the contradiction between “American Exceptionalism” and multinational consensus. Americans have to choose between the two and at this point they have a very long way to go. No American leader is tall enough, including President Barack Obama to teach this country the value of knowledge of much older civilizations. America has a lot to learn from this world and not the other way around. American arrogance bothers every single country in this world, including Russia.

Why Indians are disliked around the world?

This is an extremely complicated question! Indians in Australia believe that they are being targeted because of their race. Australian authorities believe that Indians have been attacked because of their possessions like expensive cell-phones and laptop computers. Both could be right to a limited extent. Others call Indians, “filthy foreigners“, they are also right. I was 34 years old when I came to America and I have spent more than 22 years in this country, 7 of these in a university environment and 10 on the American main-street. I have yet to find a single non-Indian who for any reason admired any Indian or India. Besides interacting with Americans, White and Black, we had to deal with students from every country in this world. Nobody had any kind words for India or Indians! Why such profound dislike for all things Indian?

Indians are very proud people and often arrogant. We all love to talk about us and India, just like Americans, Europeans and all others do. The difference is that we lecture everybody and try to make others feel that they are unfortunately, stupid! People resent that, as we have very little to show for. The world applauds non-violence but make fun of ‘Mahatma Gandhis’ of the world in their private confines. People may denounce a ‘Tiananmen Square‘, but they admire the Chinese for that. Pakistan may be the epicenter of terrorism but it is lionized as a nuclear power. Russia has been a brutal dictatorship since God knows when, but the President of United States feels obliged to pay a courtesy visit every four years. We live in a hypocritical world where might is right, India needs to learn this very important lesson.

Australia is not really a developed society!

Every time Australians misbehave, Indians seem to be quite shocked by their crude behavior! Just because they are white and talk in some form of English does not mean they are like the Europeans or the Americans. Australia remains a British colony in some respect, protected by an American security umbrella. Its economy is increasingly dependent on supplying China the raw materials like coke and iron ore, exactly the same way African countries used to supply to their colonial masters. With all the infrastructure built by the Europeans and the Americans, Australians have acquired some frivolous and unnecessary trappings of a developed country.

What has happened with Indian students in Australia in the last few days is almost impossible with either Chinese or Japanese students. The reason for that is pretty simple, either country would have taken very serious steps against the Australian government. Chinese students might have even gone on a rampage, attacking the Australian police. Indian students and the government, both are soft targets as far as Australians are concerned. They have rarely experienced India throwing its weight around, except for the last cricket tour by the Indian team! India’s diplomatic mission in Australia is a disgrace and has managed to demean their own country.

Life beyond a house and a car…

Americans have been fed with a 20th century view of prosperity and quality of life that is long outdated. The so called “American Dream” of owning a house in the suburbia, driving an American made car, having a wife, two kids, a dog and a grill in your backyard is long over. It has been 30 years since the United States was forced to share that dream with Europe and Japan and 20 years since Asia and South America invited themselves to that all American Bar-B-Que! It was way back in 1960s that President John F Kennedy realized that American leadership was slipping in science and technology and the erstwhile Soviet Union was pulling ahead in space technology. He understood the limitations of American brainpower and decided to open up the immigration to all countries. The bold and the brightest responded and the American Universities were flooded with students from around the world. Research labs received the fresh blood of creativity and American innovations overwhelmed the world! America during 1960s was at the zenith of its power!

President Kennedy was followed in office by four dim-witted and self-absorbed presidents who had little understanding of the world. Having said that, it was President Richard Nixon who opened the door to China. More than Nixon it was his National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who had the world-view and could make some intelligent assumptions. Kissinger to this day remains America’s most well-informed diplomat. By the time Lyndon B Johnson, Richard M Nixon, Gerald R Ford and finally Jimmy Carter left the scene, America and the world was a different place. Europe was asserting itself and Japan was breathing down America’s neck! Then there were these emerging  ‘Asian Tigers’ (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) that were groping their way around. The United States decided to elect the oldest President of all times in 1980. Ronald Reagan came to the office with God, Guns and the Goondas and transformed this country forever. He demolished the middle class, concentrated the nation’s wealth in fewer hands, opened and expanded the global trade, built-up the defense forces and spent the US and the Soviet Union to bankruptcy. Reagan’s transformative presidency is finally being demolished by a young President, Barack Obama.

It is the hang-over of the ‘Reagan Revolution’ that is making Americans so bitchy. He destroyed manufacturing and therefore the industrial base of this country. Reagan failed to replace manufacturing with anything else but left America in huge debt because of massive defense spending. President George H W Bush was too cautious a president to take any bold initiatives. It was all left to the set of first baby boomers to introduce America to the new ‘Information Age’. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore brought some fresh air to the ‘White House’ but without any understanding of the old world. Economy boomed with Clinton/Gore arrival in Washington DC and the deficits were replaced with huge projected surpluses. The world watched the ‘Clinton Charisma’ with wide-eyed wonder but the Muslims of the world felt neglected and left-out in the cold. They planned and retaliated with attacks on American interests; Clinton was busy with himself and ignored the signs.

President George W Bush came to the scene with dubious legitimacy to his presidency and within months faced one of the most traumatic times in American history. The 9/11 changed America and the ‘American Presidency’ forever. This replaced the ‘Cold War’ but in a very different way. America was hit once again on its own soil by an outside force after a log gap since ‘Pearl Harbor’ in 1941. First it was a natural reaction for US to retaliate with all its might but soon it became a political opportunity to scare the nation and siphon-off huge amounts of taxpayer’s money in the name of ‘War Against Terror’. President Bush departed the stage in disgrace with a bitter and bankrupt country holding the bag. The new guy walks in, unwilling to tell the truth to the American people. The days of owning a home are over. The days of driving an American Made Car are over. The days of just being white and finding a job are over. The days of affording a dog are over. The Bar-B-Que is over!

Zakaria does a hit job on Mottaki…

Fareed, it was a tacky job. You sounded just like an employee of CNN and not an independent and thoughtful opinion maker. Fareed Zakaria did a hit job on Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, today on his hour-long program on CNN. Would you like Condoleezza Rice (US Sectary of State) to be spoken to in a similar tone by a foreign journalist? Or is it that the Americans are superior to the rest of the world? Who decides that only a certain country should have nuclear weapons? Is Pakistan safer than Iran? Who decides?

Barack Obama is probably right when he laments that it is the mind-set in this establishment that has perpetuated such an arrogant foreign policy. And I am not just talking about the political establishment but the media that talks like a super-power. If this is the way we conduct ourselves, dealing with friends and foes alike, we would be completely isolated. Nobody cares about our opinion in any case. Everyone seems to be freelancing. The world becomes unstable and dangerous in the meantime.

Why should Iran not feel threatened? After what the United States, Great Britain and the Russians have done to that country, during the last 100 years or more. Iran is the inheritor of the Great Persian Civilization, once a superpower in its own right. The total population of Iran is upward of 70 million people. Two thirds of the population is under twenty five years old. The country and its people have great potential. They are just going through a bad patch. Their political leadership is not exactly friendly to the world. Did we not have a Richard Nixon for a while? Do you think Nixon was more rational than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Ask anyone in India!