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COVER STORY: PM'S RUSSIAN
TOUR
War and Peace II
History has changed, but not Indo-Russian friendship
with open arms. M.J. Akbar reports from Moscow on the prime minister's Russian
visit.
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STRATEGICALLY YOURS: Vajpayee and Putin
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The media centre
at the Radisson hotel in Moscow is in Tolstoy Hall. This is no indication
of the literary skills of the assorted journalists accompanying Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his first foreign tour after the world
somersaulted on September 11. On the other hand, the theme of the visit
is very definitely War and Peace.
If only there was one definition of those complicated
words. The US believes that its war against terrorism will be better served
if there is peace between India and Pakistan. India believes that it can
extend that war to achieve status quo-based peace in Kashmir. Pakistan
is equally certain that it can use America's war on its west to achieve
what three of its own wars in the east could not.
Life is not simple for an international traveller,
even one with his own plane.
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HISTORY REPEATS: Indo-Soviet Treaty Part
I was signed in 1971 when Pakistan was fomenting a crisis in Bangladesh
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The first stop on the three-superpower tour is
St Petersburg. The itinerary is deceptively cultural. St Petersburg has
changed its name seven time in obedience to seven shifts of history, the
last being after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But it has
not managed to quite erase the smell of socialism in the air or the look
of state planning in its street lights. This seems a happy omen for an
Indian prime minister in search of a strategic partnership as his main
course and a huge helping of arms on the side. At the formal departure
eve banquet in the glittering Kremlin two days later, President Vladimir
Putin does make a point of remembering Indira Gandhi, heroine of the Soviet
days, in his formal address. Vajpayee should have responded with Leonid
Brezhnev to maintain the spirit. In the 1970s it was MiGs. Now it is a
Gorshkov or two between consenting adults. Prime Minister Vajpayee reserved
his big bang for the press conference on the morning after the banquet,
where he fed the taste buds of the media with mention of a new defence
relationship between India and Russia of unprecedented magnitude. Then,
coyly, he refused to provide any further details, apart from a look of
unbounded satisfaction on his energised face. Nothing excites the media
more than official permission to speculate. Is it a missile? Is it a spaceship?
Is it that mythical bird called a nuclear shield? It's Superman!
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Russia and India have found a different
formula for War and Peace: peace between themselves and shared firepower
in case of war with anyone else.
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For what it's worth, my own half-fed, half-gathered
and possibly wholly inadequate information is that India and Russia will
establish joint ventures for the most technologically advanced air-defence
systems that will serve our needs for the next generation. Welcome to
the Indo-Soviet Treaty Part II. Part I was signed in an autumn of exactly
30 years ago; today the title is more modest. It is known as a Moscow
Declaration on International Terrorism. But the purpose is not drastically
different: to affirm and establish a common view on a dangerous problem
that threatens the stability, map, geography and, therefore, the history
of South Asia. Thirty years ago the policies of Pakistan in Bangladesh
created such a situation. Today the policies of Pakistan in Afghanistan
have led to the crisis. What is different is that the Moscow Declaration
is not aimed at provoking the US, nor is it intrinsically hostile to American
interests. In fact, it officially seeks to further the principal policy
of Washington. We are all on the same side, remember? But some of us are
more same than others.
If Vajpayee's defence deal bomb, dropped three
hours before his plane left for Washington, was not a message to President
George Bush, then its purpose defeats me. As the Chinese might have said:
Visit big friend's house with big walking stick in hand.
In a sense, the start of this Vajpayee trip
in St Petersburg might have been entirely appropriate. Peter the Great
founded this port city of islands and Venetian canals in 1709. In 1712,
five years after the death of Aurangzeb and 45 years before the Battle
of Plassey, the Tsar ordered his apparatchiks to find a land route to
India. This was the year, therefore, in which what became known as the
Great Game between the premier imperialists of Europe, Britain and Russia,
started. No one could fault Peter the Great for being ahead of the Game.
His successors, though, were partially diverted
to Siberia, and then found the Mussalmans down south in central Asia less
amenable to conquest than the Russian generals expected. It was only late
in the 19th century before the Uzbeks and Tajiks finally surrendered to
Moscow and opted for war by other means. It was 1979 before Moscow could
send troops to Afghanistan. One consequence of that war of occupation/liberation
(one man's occupation is another man's liberation) was the emergence of
an Arab-Afghan war hero. His name is Osama bin Laden.
So now we can blame it all on Peter the Great.
Moscow reached India sooner than it did Afghanistan. The pace was faster
because both the countries found a different formula for War and Peace:
peace between themselves and shared firepower in case of war with anyone
else.
Times have changed, as they have a bad habit
of doing. Communism has surrendered, and a tough, cool Vladimir Putin
is President of all the Russias, trying to make sense of nationalism-capitalism
in a controlled democracy. India has changed as well. Nehru and Indira
Gandhi's nationalism-socialism has succumbed to pseudo-capitalism and
uncontrolled democracy. But some things, thank God, do not change. Like
friendship with open arms.
The minister assigned to wait upon Vajpayee
during his Russia tour was Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov. His official
duties include charge of the national "Military Industrial Complex".
It is good to be candid. It saves time.
To find out more about the Vajpayee-Putin "mahatwapurna"
defence deal, put in a telephone call to George Fernandes. They should
have told him all about it by now.
(M.J. Akbar is the editor-in-chief of The
Asian Age)
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