The World Wars and India

World War anniversary observances in Western Europe, Russia and the United States are efforts to imprint an alien and illusionist history of little significance to India's own national narrative.

The European view that the two world wars were a fight against fascism is prime facie nonsense. Britain and France ruled the two largest slave empires and fought to protect their racist tyrannies.

The United States intervened in both conflicts to help the side it saw as the lesser of two evils and failed both times in its declared aim of promoting the global rule of law.

After World War I, Woodrow Wilson steered the Covenant of the League of Nations to acceptance by other Powers but not by the US Senate.

In World War II Franklin Roosevelt tried to hold the British to the Atlantic Charter’s vision of a free world but after his untimely death Winston Churchill in collusion with the new military-industrial elite of the United States subverted America’s own democracy and launched the Cold War. (See here for an explanation of what happened.)

Russian memories of both conflicts leave out much bitter reality. It was during World War I that a bunch of violent misfits guided by the loony ideas of Karl Marx took over imperial Russia and turned it into one large slave labour camp. World War II was indisputably a great patriotic struggle against a vicious enemy but commemorations gloss over the paranoid Stalinism behind that effort.

Obviously, none of this holds much meaning for India.

What we need to remember about the two world wars is that they had a strong role in aiding our struggle to get rid of British rule.

The million Indians who participated in World War I created a new reality in Indian politics that frightened the British into the overreaction of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre. That radicalized Indian opinion and filled the sails of Gandhi’s Non-cooperation movement.

Three million Indian soldiers participated in World War II, and after that Britain had no hope of holding India: the day after the Naval Mutiny of 1946, Clement Attlee announced his government’s intention to transfer power in New Delhi.

I would hazard a guess that most Indians are unaware of these facts and that even our expert analysts have not kept track of how these different narratives have played out over the last seven decades.

For India, there were immediate and heavy repercussions from the British success in engineering an American coup and launching the “Cold War.” It left Britain free to Partition India and create Pakistan as a permanently failed State to be its military proxy in South Asia.

Those realities have shaped our national life ever since, and it is alarming indeed to hear Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar speak of reciprocating Pakistani terrorism. The source of South Asian terrorism is not Islamabad but London and any tit for tat policy on Pakistan will lay us wide open to British manipulation.

That would have been obvious to everyone if our geopolitical pundits had done their work honestly over the years, but they have not, and we must live with the consequences.

The latest example of dishonesty is an edit page piece in BusinessLine (21 May) by former Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan G. Parthasarathy.

Although headlined “India still a pawn on the strategy board.”the article is no more than a review of what Parthsarathy sees as Washington’s various perfidies. This hardly shows that India is a pawn, for it is only because we pursue an independent line that there is room for perfidies.

More importantly, he ignores the fact that Washington has been guided throughout the post-World War II period by the British incubus within its national security system.

That cannot be dismissed as a coffee house “conspiracy theory” because Britain’s strategic role in launching the Cold War is much celebrated in Churchill’s March 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech.

Evidence of British involvement in launching the “war on terror” that followed the end of the Cold War is not equally clear but only because there has been no focused effort to uncover the transatlantic connections behind the 9/11 attacks.

For instance, little attention has been paid to the significance of the rigged election of Bush Jr. that set the scene in Washington a few months before the attacks.

The back story to that election is the friendship between two extremely rich families, the Bushes in the United States and the Gammells in Britain. As George Bush was ambassador in China and CIA Director, Bush Jr. was spending summers at the Gammell farm in Scotland, hanging out with scion Bill, whose college buddy was Tony Blair.

Bill Gammell founded petroleum major Cairn, which became a FTSE 100 firm in a matter of years; meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's long term ambassador in Washington became so close to the Bushes he was generally known as “Bandar Bush.”

That explains why, after a group of Saudis carried out the 9/11 attacks, a plane load of their countrymen was allowed to leave the United States without being questioned and in violation of the nationwide no-fly order then in effect.

Parthasarathy seems oblivious to this whole universe of seamy and dangerous connections underlying the most pivotal events of our time. In making the case that India is a “pawn” he makes not a single mention of Britain, a country that has manipulated us at every turn for the last 158 years (counting from the uprising of 1857).

Why our strategic analysts consistently overlook Britain's profoundly negative role in world affairs (see here and here), and its especially vicious treatment of India, is a question very much in need of an honest answer.

The issue is urgent for we could well be headed for another spate of cataclysmic events as Britain pursues its furious sense of entitlement in India (not to mention Africa, the Middle East and the United States!).

Pakistan and the United States should also pay heed, for we could all be headed for the time foreseen in the Vishnu Purana when the appearance of “eight suns” brings on a great drought.

In fact, the only way to avoid some such catastrophe might be to talk openly about who might be responsible and publicize plans to share the heat.

A Quiet Indian Peace Bid on Kashmir

Just after the conclusion of the general elections and before the results were known, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Kashmir, Satinder Lambah, made a speech in Srinagar laying out the most comprehensive peace plan India has ever made.

He said the speech reflected just his personal views but The Times of India's brief report by Indrani Baghchi (buried at the bottom of page 15 in my edition of the paper), said “the highest levels of government” were involved in crafting it.

The proposal is that that Line of Actual Control (LOC) become the de jure international border while India and Pakistan move to erase it for all practical purposes.

For that to happen, there would have to be a general demilitarization and normalization throughout Kashmir, and the winding up of terrorist training facilities in Pakistan. There would be no tariff or non-tariff barriers to trade and no constraints on the free passage of people or on development of transport infrastructure.

Presumably, somewhere along that continuum, the special constitutional provisions in effect on both sides of the border would be brought in line with the new realities.

What might give the proposal a chance of success is the changed regional dynamic resulting from the projected withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan at the end of 2014.

A significant element of the new dynamic has been the Pakistani response to the American effort to bribe the drug-running Haqqani terrorist network away from control by the ISI: Islamabad is now engaged in bombing the assets of its former client, inflicting heavy losses.

Other aspects include the energized Moscow-Beijing axis in the face of the situation in the Ukraine, Uighur terrorism in China and the tensions boiling up along Asia's eastern seaboard.

From West Asia shell-shocked by what can now be called the Arab Winter to China teetering on an economic precipice, there is a new sense of vulnerability throughout the continent.

That has caused erstwhile supporters (Saudi Arabia and China), to cool towards Pakistani sponsored “Islamic terrorism,” and even the ISI might have begun to see that if the Haqqanis can be turned into a Frankenstein’s monster, so can all its other proxies.

The wild card in all this, of course, is the British interest in continuing to control the $60 billion drug trade out of Afghanistan. That is the glue binding the ISI to British policy, and it remains to be seen if the new regional situation can weaken the bond. .

In the past, India-Pakistan peace initiatives have led to violent provocations to prevent progress. In the current circumstances, that will have to be more than the usual cross-border terrorism or attacks on consulates. It will have to be something of the order of 9/11 or 26/11, precipitating war. As I have noted before, there is evidence the British and their allies in the United States have been trying to set the scene for that.

Among the recent signs that something nasty is in the works is the disappearance from his Karachi residence of noted Indian gangster-terrorist Dawood Ibrahim. He can only be up to no good.

I do not think we will have to wait long to find out if we have chaos in South and Central Asia or a major move towards regional peace.

Short the Market!

As the Sensex and Nifty surge to all-time highs and giddy pundits predict that Narendra Modi’s projected rise to the Prime Ministerial gaddi will send the markets into the stratosphere, I would like to hand out an outsider tip: short the market!

Most of the money inflating the Indian indices has come from foreign institutional investors (FIIs), and if reality bites on the 16th, we can expect a torrid flow back and a radical correction in the markets and the value of the Rupee.

That will create a sense of panic and doom and lay the whammy on those trying to put together a non-Modi government.

Perhaps that, rather than the fabled “animal spirits” of foreign investors, is behind the ballooning markets.

Look at it from the point of view of the Powers that be, the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council.

The United States and China are engaged in a delicate pas de deux, the one pushing for a process that would bring in a multi-party democracy in Beijing and the other insisting that the existing Beagle Boys gang is best for the Chinese people.

(I think Michelle Obama and kids pushed the American message with great delicacy on their recent trip to China but had little success – even after the Pentagon tried to assuage Chinese fears of losing Tibet by flicking the kill switch on one of our B-15 troop transports. It also seems to me that Beijing’s mad dog behavior towards Japan and Vietnam is intended to signal its readiness to take off the gloves.)

At this suspenseful stage, neither Beijing nor Washington wants a regime in New Delhi capable of an assertive foreign policy.

Britain, France and the Russian Federation all have important arms supply relationships with India that would not be improved by having a strong and stable government in Delhi.

Additionally, Britain’s hopes of investing in India its ill-gotten trillions from organized crime, especially the “illicit drugs” trade out of Afghanistan, depend on weakness in Delhi.

Going by recent developments, I think the main conduit for those investments is going to be the TATA group. Its Chairman emeritus has just been given a knighthood of “the order of the British Empire” – yes, the same one that killed about 500 million Indians in less than 200 years – and his successor’s background is in infrastructure (the sector into which most FII money will probably go). Also,Voltas, a TATA company, continues to signal that the Brits will not want for toadies when they come, again.

In combination then, my tip to savvy investors is to short the market for the aftermath of the 16th, and go long on TATA Infra.

What the Crimean Crisis Means for India

All the commentary in India about the crisis over the Crimea has been from foreign viewpoints, and the resulting Russia versus the United States debate ignores our very firm interests in the matter.

To see what they are, it is necessary to be aware of the historical currents that have shaped modern realities.

Perhaps the most important of them is the rise of the United States to global power after World War II and the Ismay-Churchill coup of 1946 that subverted American democracy. It put in place an unconstitutional “permanent government” in Washington that allowed the American military and Intelligence establishments to serve under British strategic command to create the unified “West of the Cold War.

Those realities have been eroding steadily since the end of the Cold War, and have crumbled rapidly since fracking technology freed the United States from the policy constraints imposed by dependence on Saudi Arabian oil. Washington is now engaged in a complex struggle to maintain its global dominance in an increasingly multipolar world. That has involved:

1. Creating the “financial crisis” of 2008-2009 to render the international order fluid and ready for change;

2. Pushing the British to end the various global corruptions (massive money laundering, manipulating LIBOR, rigging currency exchange rates), that have sustained its power since the end of Empire;

3. The “pivot to Asia” to counter rising Chinese power;

4. End of long-standing support for tyrannical regimes in the Middle East and promoting the “Arab Spring;”

5. Continuing pressure on the remnants of the Soviet power structure reconstituted within the Russian Federation by ex-KGB operative Vladimir Putin.

India has chosen to tread very carefully through this multi-front battlefield to take creative advantage of the new opportunities it has opened up. Among the highlights:

1. India recovered quickly from the financial crisis of 2008-2009 with its economy fueled by the massive deficit spending in the US, Europe and China. Along with all other developing countries, it continued to grow at historically unprecedented rates while the industrialized countries sank into the “Great Recession.”

2. New Delhi’s effort to have British communications giant Vodafone pay taxes on assets acquired through the global black market has been a silent but stout refusal to cooperate with that reality. The silence acknowledges the enormous black money holdings of the country’s elite.

3. While engaging in strategic dialogue and partnership with the United States on Asian affairs, India has also warmed its relations with a China newly keen to win friends and influence people.

4. As the “Arab Spring” turned to winter, India has taken no sides, conscious on the one hand, that nearly a third of its $70 billion in foreign remittances come from the Middle East, and on the other hand, aware that its own political system is vulnerable to remote controlled uprisings. It has welcomed some of the changes the United States has forced on the Arab world, especially the Saudi retreat from blatant support of terrorism and its medieval outlook on human rights.

5. On the crisis in the Crimea, PM Manmohan Singh’s call for restraint by all sides is not lame fence sitting but a cri de coeur in a situation that has the potential to spin rapidly out of control. In fact, American strategists might be pushing for that to happen. Sanctions on Russia and its expulsion from the G-8 coinciding with the long feared bursting of the Chinese real estate and debt bubbles will mean there can be no coordinated international effort to contain the contagion of economic chaos. Three-quarters of all South-South exports are to Asia, and China is the largest trading partner of all of Africa, Brazil (which accounts for 3/5th of the South American economy) and India. If the Chinese economy comes in for a hard landing, the rapid growth of the South in the last decade will be history.The prospect of an Asian Century will have to be put off.

Of course, it is very possible that the United States will step in and rescue Africa. Washington is hosting its very first conclave of the continent’s leaders this summer, and a number of indicators point to a massive rise in investment in Africa.

China and India might also be thrown lifebelts, but at the cost of kowtowing to American economic prescriptions.

Whether India will do so will depend very much on the election results on 16 May. And I do not mean that a firm fascist hand at the economic tiller in New Delhi will help matters; on the contrary, it might devastate the country.

More on that in the next post.

The Scary Outlook for 2014

Did the recent terrorist bombings in Volgograd (former Stalingrad) result in a Russian threat to strike at Saudi Arabia if the Winter Olympics in Sochi are attacked?

Consider the following sequence:

1. Last summer, Saudi Security chief Bandar bin Sultan meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek Moscow’s support in Syria and offers, in return, to guarantee the Sochi Winter Olympics against terrorist attacks from “Islamists” in Dagestan. “We control them,” Bandar is reported to have told Putin. The threat only infuriates the Russian President, who proceeds after the meeting to make a deal with Washington that focuses on ridding Syria of chemical weapons. The Sunni-majority country’s Sh’iah president stays in place, foiling Saudi plans.
2. On 29 and 30 December 2013, there are terrorist bombings in Volgograd (former Stalingrad), some 700 kms from Sochi, where the Winter Olympics are set to begin on 7 February. The attacks are widely seen as an indication that the Games will be targeted.
3. On 5 January, US Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Riyadh for a three-hour meeting at “very short notice” with King Abdullah.
4. The next day, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal arrives in Pakistan on what Islamabad is at pains to emphasize is a visit long in the planning to discuss the entire range of bilateral and international issues. However, these protestations underline the opposite, that the visit, the first of any high-level Saudi since the election of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in June 2012, is in response to sudden, urgent developments.

If we connect the dots, it is hard to avoid the probability – perhaps even the certainty – that Moscow has put Washington on notice it will strike at Saudi Arabia if the Sochi Games are attacked. With Kerry’s trip to Riyadh and Saud’s visit to Islamabad, we can take it the message has been transmitted to the entire terror network.

Whether this will have the desired effect is a matter that should give us all sleepless nights, for war in Asia is just what is needed to pull Europe out of its continuing economic crisis and rescue Britain from its flood of high-rolling black market “investors.”

If the Sochi Games do come under attack and Russia proceeds to take apart the Saudi regime, the entire Middle East will be on the skids, with global repercussions.

We might see Turkey reassert control of the holy places of Islam, which it lost when Britain outflanked and destroyed the Ottoman Empire in the series of manipulations that culminated in World War I.

We might see Saudi Arabia reduced to “an oil company with a flag” status of other sheikdoms of the Gulf.

Depending on how the Sunni-Sh’iah war plays out in the Gulf, we might see a collapse of authority in several countries, affecting a key regional market that has buoyed Chinese exports in a season of faltering growth. 

If the Chinese economy deflates – as it is on the verge of doing anyway – it would send shock-waves radiating to the South-East Asian and Indian economies.

There might be wrenching changes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan equation as both countries are destabilized and Britain seeks a replacement for the ISI to manage terrorist groups running the $60 billion opium-heroin trade.

India, in an election season that seems likely to result in a hung parliament, will seem ripe for the plucking to Brit-Pak adventurers.

Overall, this scary scenario of multiple interlinked instabilities is a 21st Century version of the one that precipitated World War I exactly a hundred years ago.

Making Sense of Syria

Tarzie Vittachi, a Sri Lankan journalist who in his final years was the bemused occupant of a high United Nations office, once summed up with his characteristic terse wit, a central truth about international affairs: “Everything is about something else.”

And the “something else” always varies with the telling.

The Vittachi Conundrum and the Rashomon Effect are vivid at present in the coverage of Syria; no two analysts have quite the same story about what is happening and why.

The mainstream media view of the long-suppressed Sunni majority battling a brutal minority regime of Alawite Sh’iah is undeniable; but it is hardly a black and white picture. Most of the freedom fighters (7 of 9 groups engaged in the civil war), are intolerant Islamists, and some are barbaric; the world will not soon forget the grisly image of a rebel fighter eating the liver of a dead opponent.

A New Indian Policy for China

India needs a new China policy that is more than “Hope for the best, Expect the worst.” I suggest that it be oriented to the realization of three primary goals. 

Primary Goals

• Ensure international support for peace and stability in China as it experiences the economic crash landing that is surely shaping up. Without clear assurance of such support, China will continue its current ill-advised effort to hide the crisis by statistical bluff and political bluster. Combined with miscalculations and paranoia that could make the situation much worse and perhaps open the door for war as a remedy. Some elements of the People’s Liberation Army might want that scenario, but it would be an unmitigated disaster for the Chinese people and for all of Asia. The far right in the United States might also prefer that outcome, but it would be a serious and lasting defeat for America’s democratic mainstream. The only real beneficiaries of war in Asia would be the old imperial Powers of Europe; as the Cold War did when once before their decline seemed imminent, it would give them a new lease of life. (Britain and its proxies in Asia, especially Pakistan, will undoubtedly seek to counter this goal, not least by embroiling India in sectarian violence.)

• Push China towards democracy. The regime in Beijing should welcome this, for the Communist Party has no real support and is now spending more on internal security than on defense; a transitional road-map with overt international support would help enormously to keep its own population engaged peacefully in the process.

• Make Tibet independent by a peaceful and negotiated process. Tibet has never been a sovereign part of China. It became a tributary for a few decades after the Mongol invasion of the 17th Century, but otherwise has been an independent entity through history. Beijing will certainly object strongly to any change in the status of Tibet but its genocidal policies have effectively destroyed any little legitimacy it might have had there. After initial expressions of outrage, Beijing power-brokers should welcome the objective of peaceful and negotiated change in Tibet; it will allow China to rid itself of a heavy karmic and political burden and emerge as a modern democratic country fully acceptable to the world as a global leader.

Implementation

• International: To achieve these policy goals India should institute two processes of ongoing consultations: with China on the one hand, and on the other, with the United States, the Russian Federation, Japan, South Korea and ASEAN. The aim of the latter process should be to agree on and implement a set of measures calibrated to respond effectively and with balance to Chinese behavior, both positive and negative. The two consultative processes should have the stated aim of converging in agreement on a new security framework for the Asia-Pacific region. 

• Domestic: The Government should issue a White Paper setting out its China policy and initiate a broad all-party consultative process to ensure that it is located outside the partisan sphere of Indian politics. 

• Programs of public information and education should follow the publication of the White Paper to ensure that Indians are generally aware of what is happening and able to see through the disruptive propaganda sure to come from British/Pakistani mass media proxies in the country.

The Next World War

With the Eurozone teetering on the verge of collapse and the export-led Chinese economy facing a disastrous crash, it is more than likely that the world will slip into another Great Depression. That will require national elites to recalibrate their perks and priorities, setting off furious power struggles that could, as in the 1930s, tumble the world into a global war.

The epicenter of the war will be in Afghanistan where, in fact, it has already begun. Arrayed behind the current confrontation between the United States and Pakistan are all the major Powers of the world, albeit without much clarity of declared purpose.

We can expect the lack of clear ideological lines to continue, for like the First World War, the coming conflict will be widely seen as a confused power struggle undisguised by Good versus Evil ideologies. However, the stakes are high, for the struggle will pit Britain, China and Pakistan, nations that have an established record of subverting and opposing democracy, against the United States, India and Russia. (Moscow is a founding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that aims to exclude extra-regional players from Asian geopolitics but it has moved quietly into the democratic corner as the crisis in Afghanistan has deepened.)

The rest of the world will play a secondary but important role. Most of the nations of the Asia-Pacific will support the democracies; the recent summit in Bali showed the depth of regional misgivings about Beijing’s increasingly brusque use of power.

Africa will also support the democratic side, for neocolonial Europe has been in retreat across the continent for two decades, and as the recent anti-Chinese tenor of elections in Zambia indicated, there is growing outrage at Beijing’s predatory version of “South-South cooperation.”

Despite the efforts of al Qaeda in Brazil (where it has taken root in the sizeable Arab minority), and the pro-British drug cartels of Colombia and Mexico, Latin America will also be on the side of the democracies.

Iran’s recent confrontation with Britain shows where that important nation is likely to line up; and the inchoate struggles of the “Arab Spring” will probably be decisive in determining the alignment of the rest of the Middle East.

 It looks like an unequal struggle until we factor in Britain’s enormous corrupting influence as the primary manager of the global black market. Not only does it give the Axis Powers command of organized crime groups and terrorist movements around the world, it gives them the hidden support of elite groups in every country that have hidden their “black money” in British run tax havens. Powerful interests in the United States, India and Russia will thus be primed for treachery.

In addition, British propagandists, by far the most accomplished in the world, will be able to blur perceptions about the true nature of the struggle and create confusion globally. In that, Britain will be able to count on the reach of its own media organizations and of proxies in most of the democratic countries. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s pose as an “Islamic” champion will continue to confuse the Ummah and Beijing will be able to mobilize the support of “Leftist” sympathizers in many places. India will have to contend with all three factors.

Although New Delhi has wisely rejected the concept of anti-China military cooperation with the United States and Australia, it would be folly to ignore the realities of the current situation. In a period of supposed relaxation of tensions, China has been building up its forces all along our northern border; it now has a permanent presence in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. The thaw in relations between Islamabad and Delhi is in the context of American pressure on Pakistan; it is unlikely to lead to anything meaningful. Britain continues its long-standing effort to subvert India through its political, corporate, media and Naxal proxies.

In dealing with the coming crisis, official India is handicapped in many ways. The most serious problems are the lack of strategic direction in our fractured political culture and the subservience of much of our “elite” media to British interests. In combination, those two factors have created a sense of national drift and growing disillusion. Unless our political class mobilizes to meet these and other challenges that lie ahead, the country will be in great danger.

UN Scorned in US-Russian World View

There is just one mention of the United Nations in the White House summary highlighting noteworthy aspects of the "strategic framework" agreed to by Presidents Bush and Putin at Sochi on 6 April. It occurs in the final paragraph, and refers to their commitment to "work with all major emitting economies to advance key elements of the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

There are more references in the full text but they do little to recognize that the United Nations was conceived as an organization central to the international strategies of all its 192 member States. In fact the first mention of the UN puts that idea firmly aside: "Going forward, we intend to deepen our cooperation wherever possible, while taking further, even more far-reaching steps, to demonstrate our joint leadership in addressing new challenges to global peace and security in accordance with the principles of international law, taking into consideration the role of the United Nations."

The next mention comes in passing, as the two sides take note of their "Joint Statement on the INF Treaty at the sixty-second session of the UN General Assembly." (The statement committed them to "a high-level dialogue to analyze current and future intermediate-range and shorter-range ballistic and cruise missile threats and inventory options for dealing with them.")

The third reference is more direct but hardly supportive of the primacy of the UN in multilateral affairs: "We are determined to work closely together on all the major global international issues that confront us, including the pursuit of peace in the Middle East, security and stability in North East Asia through the Six-Party process, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and elsewhere around the world, working with other nations through the United Nations, as well as other international and regional mechanisms, including the NATO-Russia Council and the G-8, to strengthen our cooperation wherever possible."

The fourth reference is more of the same: "We will expand our cooperative efforts through continued partnership in the United Nations and in other multilateral fora to include the OSCE, NATO-Russia Council, and the G-8, and in expanding the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. We will advance our counterterrorism goals at the United Nations, including through strengthening the Counterterrorism Committee and the [Security Council resolution #] 1267 sanctions regime."

That is it.

***

Three days after the Sochi Summit UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was in Moscow, his first visit since assuming office. He met with Putin and his successor Dmitry Medvedev, who assured Ban, according to ITAR-TASS, "that the UN was the only global body with the authority to resolve international disputes." That was a lead-in to expressions of discontent with what has happened in Kosovo, a Muslim-majority province of Serbia that declared itself independent in February and was immediately recognized by the three Western Powers on the Security Council.

With China and Russia in opposition, the Security Council cannot legitimize Kosovo's secession, but Ban has been less than eager to note that or the danger of a widely destabilizing conflict if the situation is not peacefully resolved. Russian unhappiness with that is said to have been conveyed in rather personal terms: a threat that Moscow would veto a second term for Ban as Secretary-General.

According to published reports Medvedev also offered a carrot, the prospect that the Russian Federation would be open to a significant increase in its contribution to the UN budget. (One publication cited a Kremlin source in saying that Moscow would be willing to match Washington's 22 per cent share of the UN's $2 billion biennial budget; that would be a stunning spike from its current 1.2 per cent.) But it was to no avail. At a Press conference Ban said it was impossible to retrieve the pre-February position of Kosovo, and unrealistic to expect that it could be done.

Meanwhile, Kosovo authorities are reported to have moved quickly to dismantle the infrastructure of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), asking it to vacate two centrally located buildings in Pristina. Reports in Kosovo newspapers say that UNMIK will close its doors in June, and be replaced with a "UN Office in Pristina;" how that can be arranged in the teeth of Chinese and Russian opposition remains to be seen. Also subject to speculation is whether the Serbs in Kosovo will now declare the independence of territories where they are in a majority; if they do, we could be in for another murderous confrontation in the Balkans.