Earlier this week,Express Adda hosted Fareed Zakaria,noted foreign affairs columnist,author and Editor-at-large at Time. It was a wide-ranging discussion with Delhis intelligentsia,who remained glued to Zakarias incisive analysis of global affairs. He talked about the Iran crisis,challenges in the Af-Pak region,India-Pakistan relations,China,and Americas decline in the global order. Express Adda is a series of serious and informal conversations with people who lead change. The discussion was moderated by Shekhar Gupta,Editor-in-Chief,The Express Group,and C Raja Mohan,Contributing Editor,The Indian Express. Express Adda is in association with Reid & Taylor and was held at Lap Gardens in Delhis Samrat Hotel. Fareed Zakaria on Iran The Obama administration has been extremely effective in putting the sanctions in place and putting the pressure but it hasnt been very creative on the other front. Part of the reason is that they have no political cover to do that. Were Barack Obama to open direct negotiations with the Iranians and challenge the Iranians to come forward and do it,he would be criticised by every Republican candidate,every lobby in the United States,by the Israeli government and it would be a huge cause celebre. Then you add on to this the Israeli government,especially the Prime Minister,who sees this as a kind of historical challenge that they have to deal with and who wants to go down in history as the PM who dealt with this. It is also true that it is an effective way for the PM to keep his coalition together because the one thing that they agree upon is the Iranian threat. Now youre in a situation when the Obama administration has boxed itself in. The President said containment is not an option. He said I dont bluff. These were seen as very bold statements. I think theyre idiotic. I dont think any President should ever say I dont bluff. Frankly,a lot of international relations is bluffing. There are two possibilities. Either the Iranians put their hands up,say we surrender and sign the dotted line. Iran is a proud ancient civilisation. This regime is pretty tough. It came to power through revolution. Its stood eight years of Iran-Iraq war. Doesnt strike me that this is the kind of regime that will throw up its hands and say okay I surrender. Or there is no alternative but some kind of military option. Then the Israelis talk about a window of opportunity. And what they claim they mean by this is that,at one point,an attack on Iran would not really be able to diminish their capacity. Frankly I think nobody knows how far the Iranians have gone,what they have and havent. The one thing that I have discovered as a writer and thinker is that please do not trust intelligence estimates on anything.. I have been told by senior Mossad officials that Iran is one year away from acquiring nuclear weapons for the last 12 years. The real window of opportunity is that the Israeli government,particularly Prime Minister Netanyahu,knows that if he attacks Iran between now and November,he will have the unqualified support of the American administration. If he attacks after November,he cant be sure of that. To attack during election season ensures that nobody will do anything about it and they will line up hundred percent behind Israel. After that,no matter who wins,the President is most likely to use a strategic decision rather than a political decision. On Afghanistan The US has muddied its strategic thinking about Afghanistan. The objective was to create a strong centralised government which cannot be taken over by the Taliban. It said the government needs to have the loyalty of its people and capacity,be honest and provide things like electricity. So you get to the point when David Petraeus was running the Afghan search and spending a great deal of time on how to get electricity to Kandahar. Now,this is taking counter insurgency to a ridiculous extreme. Even if the US leave in five years,youre not going to change anything. Kandahar will remain Kandahar. We should take a strategic approach on our interests in Afghanistan and make sure that it doesnt become a base for significant terrorist activities. The more important and difficult question is how to achieve the same mission in Pakistan because most of the terrorist activities that have come out of the region have come out of Pakistan. Not Afghanistan. There is not a single Afghan who has been involved in a global terrorist event including 9 On Pakistan Pakistan is,in the conventional senses of the word,not a real nation. It has always struggled with what exactly means to be a Pakistani. It is a conglomerate of ethnic groups,of identities,of languages,and they share one thing which is that they are not Indian and that they are Muslim. It is basically a failed state a feudal society that has never had land reform and has had its democracy captured by its feudal landlords. It is an army that happens to have a country. If you want to look at the proof of this theory the essential argument is that it is the collapse of governance and modernisation in the Arab world that caused the enormous oppositional extreme violent terrorist culture. Look at the unity of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt today. They are trying to get Hamas to renounce its goal of destroying Israel and present a unified front to come up with a solution. They believe its their problem,their country,of which they have ownership. Who in Pakistan has ownership of their country? Its all about bad economics,bad politics,and layered on top of this is a country that has a very difficult founding rationale. On India-Pakistan Relations I feel Pakistan should adopt a civilian conception of its national interest which says that the great prize is not just getting strategic depth in Afghanistan. They have a misaligned strategy which should change. The region is growing,India is growing they must start thinking of how they can hook themselves on to this wagon and improve the lives of the people. How would you justify 25 percent of the federal budget going to the army? When I spoke to Musharraf privately about this,he was very clear that the core commanders were very aware of the consequences of the breakout of peace with India with regard to their budgets,their authority and their power. Both India and USA should be in favour of the civilian government of Pakistan. Narendra Modi on Time cover My personal opinion is that Narendra Modi is unlikely to be a national leader in India and he may not even be a regional leader in India,come December. He has been able to achieve certain kinds of things but he cannot be the face of India. Karl Marx said that history repeats itself twice first time as tragedy and second time as farce. There is not going to be the Hindutva takeover of India this is one stream that will be diverted in the long run. On China Its the central strategic challenge the US faces. I would say that in the geopolitical realm,the US is in a comfortable position. It is the dominant power,militarily. If you had to do a poll and say who should be the leading power in Asia,China or the US,it would be an easy victory for the US. It does not mean that there is a demand for the leadership. . If you want to think of it in non-partisan terms,over the last 20 years,what you have seen as an American strategy towards Asia has been a classic off-shore balancer,recognising the rise of China. If the Chinese were to try to become more geopolitically aggressive,the US will have put in place an effective mechanism and,frankly,would be able to counter that Chinese expansion pretty easily. The Chinese are unlikely to use their position as the worlds primary creditor to rewrite the rules of global order.. On America: Decline and Hope US is also the only advanced country to be demographically vibrant. Every other advanced industrial country is demographically dying. In just 15 or 20 years from now,the US will have 400 million people. It will have better demographics than China. The one problem is the political system. And its not just a US problem. . If we can recognise the rise of the other countries and the new world and adjust,adapt and play,US has enormous strengths. But if you sit there and think of 1991,when the world was left to Washington,were not in that world any more. My bet is that the US will be able to renew itself because of immigration,its high quality tertiary educational system and because it remains a very dynamic economy and society. There is something in the US culture that encourages participation and excellence.
