Thomas Friedman is a smart man, but misinformed!

Tom Friedman wrote an editorial this morning in the New York Times titled, The Green Revolution(s), on the Iranian crisis. The point that Friedman is trying to make is that the autocracies like Iran are sustained because of petro dollars. He believes that if America stops consuming the Middle East oil, the theocracies of the region would be forced to accept political reforms. The United States of America does not import any oil from Iran because it produces mostly the heavy crude for which US does not have any refineries. Secondly, America does not have any diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979 revolution. Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria are the main suppliers of crude oil to the United States. Another important point that Tom Friedman must consider is that China and India are becoming major consumers of Iranian Oil and both are investing billions of dollars in increasing the refining capacities for the heavy crude that countries like Iran export. Therefore, whatever America does or does not do would have virtually no impact on Iran or their rulers in the short run. Sentiments aside, Tom must understand the diminishing influence of the USA in the global oil market! Tom Friedman, please THINK about it!

Nationalization of the willing?

If Russia or Venezuela took over a private sector company, it was called nationalization. Now that the entire financial sector is being nationalized in America, it is called a rescue effort. I call it a double-speak! We should have seen this coming a long time back. Americans have been living beyond their means for the last three decades. The saving rate amongst the Blacks and Whites is zero if not in negative. The life-style of the lower-middle-class in United States is higher than upper-middle-class in the developing world. Why? It is arrogance, stupid! When I first visited United States in 1981, I fell in love with this country. So I went back, closed my business and returned back with my wife. Of course the American Consulate would not allow my children to come with us. So we left our children with my mother and came back to this great country to pursue further education and experience the American way of life. By this time the Reagan Administration was in full swing, spreading the divisive policies of the Republicans. We both loved America and the Americans for the next twenty months and decided to return home and bring our children with us. That was 1984. It took us another four years to get the required visas for all of us to come back to this Promised Land.

We returned back as a family to the United States of America in 1988. It was a changed country. President Ronald Reagan was about to leave office in four months. George H W Bush was busy trashing Governor Michael Dukakis to become the next president at any cast. Americans were broke and bitching, but life went on. Japan was the latest ‘piñata’ that everybody loved to bash. Financially, the next four years were hell. 1992 brought back the Democrats to rule over the demoralized nation. Peace and prosperity returned for the next eight years. Republicans made a lot of money, Americans were having fun, including Bill Clinton, in the White House! This was not acceptable to the ‘Working Class Americans’; they wanted a President with whom they could share a ‘Beer’. Well! They got one for the next eight years and now they don’t have money to buy ‘Beer’. What an irony? So, do not blame just the ‘Wall Street’, it is the ‘Main Street’ that is screwed-up. Americans have the government that they deserve. Let us not kid ourselves. Just listen to the Americans on the main street. They want good jobs without going to college. They want all the benefits without paying for them. They blame the immigrants for everything and the rest is China’s fault! All the good-paying jobs are being out-sourced to China and India!

Wall Street is the least of America’s problems. The $700 billion dollar bailout is nothing but a fraud being perpetuated by crooked politicians and an over-ambitious Treasury Secretary. Just watch Henry Paulson on TV, he can barely hide his smile. He is about to pull a fast-one on a dumb US Congress. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, is like a ‘Paanwala’ on the Washington DC ‘Nukkar’, selling fancy stories to his ‘Purabia Saathis’ in US Senate. The man has no concept of a ‘Monetary Policy’ nor does he understand the ‘Economic Policy’. How else would you explain his leadership of the Banking Committee and not having a clue as to what has been happening to the US Financial Markets for the past two years? Another joker is Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. He understands economics but since he is so fond of talking, nobody listens to him anymore. No wonder we are in such a pickle!

The problem with John McCain’s ‘League of Democracies’…

John McCain, the Republican Presidential Candidate, talked about the ‘League of Democracies’ at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The idea sounds noble but with no details. Is he talking about the democracies of the Western World? Then what is the point of having NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)? If he wants to include Japan, South Korea and few other countries, he might as well expand NATO. The problem with such ideas is that out of the 6.5 billion people in the world, 1.3 billion are Chinese, and not democratic. There are 1.2 billion Muslims who consider democracy to be against their religion. Then there are a billion plus Africans who take democracy to be a joke. Besides, there are 1.1 billion Indians who are all too democratic to be talked to. This takes care of 4.6 billion people in the world, leaving only 1.9 billion to be considered for the ‘League of Democracies’. Out of the 1.9 billion left, I bet you, a billion represent countries like Columbia, Cuba and Venezuela.

The problem is not the lack of international institutions but the ruling attitudes and the state of mind. The Western World has a particular concept of democracy, suited only for their world view. Where do you place Russia? Is it democratic or authoritarian? Even a country like India, an acknowledged democracy, is very difficult to deal with. India has a free-for-all democracy, unlike the United States, which is neatly arranged into two organized national parties. The governing coalition in India has to build a national consensus every time the Prime Minister has to take a major decision. Can you imagine India going to war with any country just on the basis of some flimsy evidence? And how do you leave China out of the discussion? As it is, a majority of Chinese feel that America and Europe are against them. They are suspicious of Russia and openly hostile to India. There are issues like Chechnya, Kashmir and Tibet to be resolved before you think of any more leagues.

Since the end of Vietnam War and the fall of the Soviet Union, Americans have been obsessed with Israel, Oil and Middle East. Japan fell off their radar since 1991, China replaced Japan as the next whipping boy. Terror, Afghanistan and Pakistan came into focus after September 11, 2001 and the issue continues till date. India features once in a while as a prefix to China, mainly in reference to the outsourcing menace. Burma, Darfur, Tibet and Zimbabwe are insignificant stories, discussed as moral outrage just to feel better. We hear very little about Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Australia. There is no serious foreign policy discussion because there is very little knowledge or even interest on the main street. When presidential candidates talk about their foreign policy credentials, they focus on the Iraq War, Israel-Palestine conflict, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. If this is going to be the vision of the next President, we are not going to be much better off. The world is much bigger and more complex than this world view.