Diplomacy hits a high note
Ding Ying

AMERICAN poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said music was the universal language of mankind. His words rang true at the New York Philharmonic’s concert on February 26 in Pyongyang. The unprecedented performance showed that after a half-century of confrontation, North Korea and the United States finally found a language that could enhance their understanding of each other. The New York Philharmonic visited North Korea on February 25-27. It gave one formal concert in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater and played informally with North Korean musicians at other time, starting a prelude of more communication and dialogue between the two countries. International affairs experts around the world said the orchestra’s historical visit was an exceptional kind of “music diplomacy” or “philharmonic diplomacy.”
“The tour marked a milestone in the two countries’ efforts to ease up their tense relations,” said Shen Shishun, Director of the Asia-Pacific Security and Cooperation Department at the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). Although the visit was a cultural exchange, it inevitably was imbued with political and diplomatic significance, he said. Shen pointed out that first two songs the orchestra played in its formal concert-North Korea’s national anthem Patriotic Song and the U.S. national anthem The Star-Spangled Banner—indicated that the two countries recognized each other as sovereignty.
In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, Jin Xide, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said the orchestra’s performance in North Korea was a tour that had “melted ice in hearts” and was a turning point that would improve the two countries’ bilateral relationship. Both North Korea and the United States had high praise for the New York Philharmonic’s Pyongyang performance. After the tour, North Korean Culture Minister Kang Nung Su did an interview with The Wall Street Journal, in which he called the performance “the first step to cultural exchanges between the two countries.” Kang also said the North Korean state orchestra would visit the United States, if the Americans invited it.
An article in The New York Times said the concert was the first time a major American cultural organization had appeared in North Korea and that the orchestra formed “the largest contingent of U.S. citizens since the Korean War.” Other reports said former U.S. President George H.W. Bush would likely visit North Korea as an envoy of the White House. A report in the Beijing-based journal International Herald Leader said such a visit could be seen as a continuation of the New York Philharmonic’s ice-breaking visit.
An optimistic future Experts believe that the reason the two countries started to ease their tension was based on Pyongyang’s agreement last year to dismantle its nuclear facilities. During the several sessions of the six-party talks in 2007, the North Koreans assumed an attitude of active cooperation and shut down the Yongbyon reactor as scheduled. “North Korea at least showed its sincerity to the United States to give up its nuclear program and that deserved to be encouraged by the U.S. side,” Shen from the CIIS said. Jin from the CASS pointed out that North Korea’s invitation to the New York Philharmonic was a friendly gesture to the United States and a positive signal to the international community for three reasons. First, the decision to invite the New York Philharmonic indicated that Pyongyang’s policy of warming its relations with the United States had not changed and was a reassurance to the rest of the world. Second, it showed Pyongyang’s self-confidence in thawing its relations with Washington. Third, although the declaring and dismantling of its nuclear facilities had not been proceeding smoothly due to political and technical elements, North Korea still wanted to prove its sincerity on this point, Jin said.
He also pointed out that some hardliners in the United States, such as former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, insisted that the United States should not trust North Korea. But Pyongyang’s invitation was a good counterattack to similar comments, he said. The New York Philharmonic’s performance showed that the U.S. side was willing to extend an olive branch to North Korea. Shen Dingli, Executive Deputy Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, wrote in an editorial in the Shanghai-based Xinmin Weekly that the orchestra’s visit also reflected the Bush administration’s current situation: Due to the messy Iraqi situation and slide of the U.S. economy, Washington had to act more mildly to avoid more problems in its diplomacy. In turn, the North Koreans needed to give up on some level to get economic compensation to develop its economy.
Both sides need events such as the Pyongyang concert to facilitate communication, because so far very few channels exist for them to exchange views in any fields, said Shen. If North Korea and the United States made great progress in setting up regular channels of communication and exchanging ideas, Washington would possibly remove North Korea from its list of states that support terrorism and withdraw U.S. economic sanctions against it. This would have the practical benefit of boosting North Korea’s economy, he added. “What North Korea is thinking about is how to benefit more during the current climate of regionalization and globalization, and getting rid of U.S. sanctions is the first step to become more globalized,” Shen said.
Shen also said the normalization of North Korean-U.S. relations would stabilize the situation in Northeast Asia and would be greatly welcomed by neighboring countries, including China. He forecast that the “music tour” would help to normalize North Korean-U.S. bilateral relations as well as push forward the six-party talks. If the two countries’ bilateral relationship was on the right track, it would be very positive in settling the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula, Shen said. The experts also believe that a settlement of the North Korean nuclear issue would promote a settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue. Iran has said that it has the right to pursue nuclear development for civilian purposes, though some members of the international community believe it would develop nuclear weapons instead. If this spillover effect were to happen, it would be a win-win situation for everyone, Shen said. But he believes that this technical problem could be easily resolved with legal inspections and supervision from the international community through the International Atomic Energy Agency. “After all, non-proliferation is a common target of all countries that they are working hard to reach,” Shen said.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review  Articles Exchange Item)

Illusion and reality
M J Akbar

THE good news for the Sonia Gandhi’s Congress is that Rahul Gandhi is finally beginning to irritate someone. The bad news is that he has irritated Mayawati, the increasingly iconic leader of India’s Dalits. Mayawati has achieved something unprecedented in the Dalit experience. She has come to power on her own terms. Her mentor, Kanshi Ram, indisputably paved the way, but in historical terms, he was only the herald of this extraordinary seismic shift in the demographics of Indian politics. Someone still had to deliver on the prophecy.
Mayawati has both outpaced her mentor and risen to a higher trajectory. To push the metaphor, she has traveled both horizontally and vertically on the same momentum, which is quite unique political yoga. To claim power is a dream. To achieve it is to rewrite history. And to do so on your own terms is a glittering embellishment to an already impressive chapter. The clash between Congress and Mayawati was perhaps inevitable, since both claim the same electoral turf. Sonia Gandhi has been completely unable to stem the Mayawati tide, being swamped in Uttar Pradesh and driven out by parallel currents in states like Gujarat. She has now thrown Rahul Gandhi into this churn. His visit to a Dalit home on Mayawati’s base was a direct challenge. This by itself is unexceptional.
But after over four years of power, and single-point leadership, the Congress can no longer distinguish between an adversary and an enemy. It has created a subculture of us-versus-them, and secret hit lists, giving a bitter edge to the normal tensions of political life. One can see the vapor rising in language, and the rancor rising in body language. Rahul Gandhi has begun the Congress campaign for the next general election, and opted for a personal variation of what might be called the Indira Gandhi model. This was best exemplified by a decision Mrs. Gandhi made during the bleak years of Janata Party rule, after the end of the Emergency in 1977 and the defeat of the Congress in that year’s election. An incident took place in a remote village in Bihar, where Dalits were victims of upper caste hostility and violence. Mrs. Gandhi decided to go there, and when no other means of transport was available for the last mile, she got on to an elephant. That gesture was the alchemy that transformed the fortunes of a depressed and divided Congress. A second incident, during which she squatted down and offered arrest when the Janata began to pursue her with expected, but unacceptable, animosity, offered an equally dramatic image to photographers. This is the parallel that Rahul Gandhi seeks to draw when he turns up “unexpectedly” in tribal homes in Orissa, or a Dalit village in Uttar Pradesh; or when Mrs. Sonia Gandhi gallantly offers to send her son and heir to jail for a day or two to prove his heroic credentials in the struggle against Mayawati. But there are significant differences between 1978 and 2008.
To begin with, in 1978, Indira Gandhi was the only leader and Congress the only party that identified itself with the Dalit cause. The Janata government was a coalition of middle and upper caste power brokers that paid occasional lip service to the Dalits, but not much more. They lost a glorious opportunity to shift the demographic and political equations of the country when it refused to make the pre-eminent Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram, prime minister after the elections and chose the anaemic Morarji Desai instead. In 2008, Mayawati is the lodestar of the Dalits, the Indira Gandhi of her community. Nor is she a Brahmin with sympathy for the downtrodden; she is a Dalit herself, part of the poverty and the humiliation of thousands of years, with a ferocious sense of identity with her people. Jagjivan Ram sought change through conciliation; Mayawati seeks change through confrontation. Dalits feel empowered now; they felt helpless when Indira Gandhi was on her way to Bihar. 1978 was the season of bitter fruit; 2008 is the season of long-denied apples. Mayawati’s response to Rahul Gandhi’s politicking is an indication of the new ferocity. Rahul Gandhi wants votes for himself; Mayawati wants a new horizon for herself and her community. When she invoked the images of soap and incense, and charged that the likes of Rahul Gandhi privately purified themselves after publicly associating with Dalits, she was arousing passions around the two great crimes against Dalits, poverty and untouchability. She was also hinting at a third crime, a modern one, induced by democracy — of hypocrisy. This was not a speech put together by some extra-clever boys around a computer; she etched those images into the speech herself. By throwing “foreign” into the mix, she raised the ante to the foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi and the international lifestyle of Rahul Gandhi. Mayawati’s message was carried by television and print across India.
The genteel might not consider Mayawati very gentle but the genteel are heavily outnumbered in Indian democracy. A friend watched this speech in his office, in the company of his colleagues. When an executive expressed his disapproval, a bearer said simply, “This is what has made Mayawati chief minister, and this is what will make her prime minister”. I would change “will” to “could” but otherwise the statement stands on merit.
What the Congress leadership does not understand is that dynasty cannot offer itself as an alternative to a genuine mass leader. The old Congress won the sympathy of Dalits because it encouraged Dalit leaders to rise in the party; today, only the dynasty has the right to represent every community in the country. Doesn’t work in a maturing democracy. The April 5 issue of the Economist makes the perceptive point that democracy does not necessarily throw up clean results: “...of 21 countries which have elected new governments in the past four months, the result of the vote itself was less than decisive in at least six. The number seems to be rising”. This pattern came into play in India after 1989, when Vishwanath Pratap Singh formed a minority government after an indecisive result. There has been no majority government in 18 years through five general elections. Governments are now formed by post-poll rather than pre-poll alliances. The need for a stable government, or perhaps any government at all, trumps other differences. Numbers determine the level of power a leader exercises within a coalition. In Germany, Angela Merkel became chancellor at the head of a grand coalition between long-standing adversaries because she got one seat more than her opponents. The power of one has rarely been higher. Such a syndrome in India opens the field for Mayawati, as well as others.
The Congress is desperately hoping that Mayawati fails, or collapses. Its wish has some probability on its side. Against such a probability, Mayawati is bolstered by a possibility. Mayawati is not the pretty or handsome heir of a stagnant dynasty. She is monarch of a kingdom she has won on the field of battle. She believes that her kingdom can expand into an empire. This may happen; it may not. But remember this: A democracy encourages flexible, fluid boundaries. Some things are probable, but everything is possible. This Maya is no illusion.

—Arab News




Is West trying to revive the Cold War?
Hassan Tahsin

VLADMIR Putin decided not to run for another term as president of Russia paving the way for his protégé Dmitry Medvedev to succeed him. This does not mean he is no more interested in the future of the Rossiyskaya Federatsiya (the Russian Federation) which rose, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Soviet Union. As two-term president, Putin transformed Russia beyond recognition. Now Russia is a confident, resurgent power. For the last eight years, GDP has steadily increased, rising by the highest percentage of 8.1 percent since the fall of the Soviet Union. Inflation has fallen to under 10 percent, and Russia’s trade balance has increased threefold in four years.
Russians would, undoubtedly, remember Putin as a strong leader who rescued them from the anarchy that surfaced in the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and reasserted the Russian identity. The outside challenges Putin had to counter were no less serious. The United States, which wanted a total surrender by Russia, applied varying degrees of pressures to guarantee that Moscow would never be back on its feet after the terrible decade of disintegration, rampant corruption and steady decline. The most threatening and humiliating of the US moves against Russia is a new European missile scheme that would include installation of US radars to spy on Russia. Reminiscent of the old Soviet adventures, Putin sent Russian scientists to explore the polar region and put the Russian flag deep in the ocean in the disputed Arctic region. It was a calculated move to reassert Russian stakes over the enormous energy reserves in the normally inaccessible region. More than 100 Russian scientists and geologists had a mission to find evidence to reinforce the mountain ranges in the ocean bed was a geographical extension of Russian territory providing valid grounds for the Russian claim.
The Western protests at the Russian attempt to ignite a conflict on the North Pole region was quite understandable. According to US experts, the Arctic region sits on top of the 25 percent of the oil and gas reserves in the world besides reserves of diamonds, platinum, manganese, nickel, tin and lead. In an apparent move to show the Western powers that he did not fear them, Putin launched a scheme of advanced long-range ballistic missiles. They included missiles that could be launched from sea, land and from the air. Russia also decided to station permanent fleets in the Mediterranean and other major oceans around the globe. Putin is also not ready to accept unilateral US decisions in matters related to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Russia recently warned that NATO was playing with fire if it intended to go ahead with the plan to admit its neighbors Georgia and Ukraine to the US-dominated alliance. The neoconservatives at White House believe that Putin was trying to revive the Cold War and thus play its historical role on world stage.
It is also not a secret that there are fundamental differences of opinion between Moscow and Washington on most sensitive international issues such as the independence of Kosovo and Iran’s nuclear projects besides the defense shield project in the Eastern Europe. Russia also does not approve of the continued US presence in Iraq or the NATO presence in Afghanistan besides the American meddling in the Central Asian republics. Their suspicion is not misplaced as Putin made it clear that he was determined to return Russia to its old glory, particularly after NATO backed the plan to install a US radar system in the Czech Republic to track ballistic missiles. Though Putin has stepped down as president, it does not mean that he would not come back after four years. In February 2007, Putin warned the US that some of its practices went beyond limits of toleration. Three months later in June he threatened to position the Russian missiles toward new European targets if the US went ahead with the Defense Shield project. One thing is certain: Putin would not remain a mute spectator if the Western powers attempt to sideline Russians.

—Arab News