DTN News - CHINA TOPIC: Traditional China Was An Arrogant, Aggressive And Brutal State

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - CHINA TOPIC: Traditional China Was An Arrogant, Aggressive And Brutal State
*China Counts Its Victories

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Strategy Page
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - May 14, 2013: Chinese leaders are making much of the fact that 200 years ago China was a mighty empire that generated a third of world GDP and 150 years later that was down to less than five percent. 

Now, because economic reforms in the 1980s, Chinese GDP is 16 percent of the world total and rising. But 200 years ago China was 35 percent of the world’s population and now is 20 percent. The U.S. has a fifth of GDP on the planet with only five percent of the population. China expects their GDP to surpass that of the U.S. within 10-20 years and then keep going. This makes many Chinese feel great and more willing to tolerate the police state bureaucrats who run the country.

Yet many Chinese and foreign economists doubt that the growth will go where Chinese officials say it will. That’s because Chinese economic growth has been slowing down and that trend is likely to continue because of numerous problems with the Chinese banking system and industrial policy as well as unfavorable trends in pollution and labor force growth.

Still, most Chinese are proud of their economic achievements in the last three decades and see this as the return of China to the leading position it has held for thousands of years. The 19th and most of the 20th century were a disaster for China and a recovery from that is seen by Chinese as long overdue. Foreigners, especially if they aren’t neighbors of China, have a hard time appreciating how important this is in China. But for those who live close to China, these new Chinese attitudes and aggressiveness are regarded with a sense of dread. Traditional China was an arrogant, aggressive and brutal state. The neighbors all have considerable experience with this and don’t look forward to seeing the bad old days return. China simply sees it new assertiveness as reclaiming what was lost in the many defeats it suffered during the 19th and early 20th century. It’s aggression borne of arrogance, which has been the cause of so many wars in the past.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Strategy Page
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*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News - INDIA TODAY: Goodman The Lalten Lost His Way In Darkness - Manmohan Singh The Incredible Prime Minister of India

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - INDIA TODAY: Goodman The Lalten Lost His Way In Darkness - Manmohan Singh The Incredible Prime Minister of India
*Manmohan Singh a man in shadow, underachiever says Time Magazine.

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Business Line
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - July 8, 2012:  The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, who has long been lauded for his pivotal role in liberalising the Indian economy, has been dubbed an “underachiever” by a top US magazine which says he appears “unwilling to stick his neck out” on reforms that will put the country back on growth path.

79-year-old Dr Singh is featured on the cover of Time magazine’s Asia edition, which will be out next week. With his portrait in the background, the title on the cover reads ‘The Underachiever — India needs a reboot’.

‘Is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh up to the job?’ Time’s report ‘A Man in Shadow’ asks, adding that apart from facing the challenges of a slowdown in economic growth, huge fiscal deficit and a falling rupee, India’s Congress party-led UPA coalition “has found itself fending off corruption scandals and accused of showing a lack of economic direction.”

”....investors at home and abroad are beginning to get cold feet. Voters too are losing confidence, as rising inflation and a litany of scandals chip away at the government’s credibility,” the magazine said.

Pointing towards Dr Singh’s fall “from grace,” the magazine said, “in the past three years, the calm confidence he (Dr Singh) once radiated has been absent. He seems unable to control his ministers and — his new, temporary portfolio at the Finance Ministry notwithstanding — unwilling to stick his neck out on reforms that will continue the process of liberalisation he helped start.”

The magazine said at a time when India cannot afford a slowdown in economic growth, “laws that could help create growth and jobs are stuck in Parliament, sparking concerns that politicians have lost the plot in their focus on shorter—term, populist measures that will win votes.”

“Now that Singh is interim Finance Minister as well as PM, he has greater scope and a fresh opportunity to turn things around — but it’s by no means certain that he can,” Time said.

Over the past 20 years, Dr Singh’s “avuncular visage and signature powder blue turban were synonymous with India’s rising star, a fixture on front pages since the early 1990s, when, as Finance Minister, he played a pivotal role in liberalising the economy and setting the nation on the path of fast growth,” the magazine said.

It said in a national capital full of bluster and backroom deals, the quiet economist has long been admired for his restraint and personal integrity. The country clocked a 9.6 per cent growth in his first term as Prime Minister.

“For the past two years, the Congress-led coalition has found itself fending off scandals, most notably the corrupt awarding of 2G spectrum at prices below market value,” the magazine said.

It added that Dr Singh’s “squeaky-clean image” took a hit when anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare levelled charges at Dr Singh and more than a dozen of his ministers over the alleged misallocation of coal-mining rights.

India’s “battered economy” is another menacing concern for Dr Singh, Time said.

“In a bid to cushion the pain of inflation and keep constituents happy ahead of ever looming elections, the UPA has been burning through its boom—time chests, spending on subsidies and social benefits. But business-friendly laws that could spur growth to offset that spending are languishing, and industry is struggling,” it said.

Given the bleak economic situation, industry leaders are demanding a host of bold reforms, such as an end to expensive subsidies, deregulation of diesel prices and resumption of a law to allow multi-brand retailers like Walmart into India, the magazine said.

Dr Singh has said that the government owes it to the country to take all the “necessary decisions which would return the country to a high—growth path,” it said.

Time said Dr Singh has joined the public soul-searching belatedly, and the electorate will let him know what it thinks of his performance in general elections scheduled for 2014.

”...India can only wait to see if Singh can rouse himself, let alone prevail or overcome,” it said.

The magazine said some believe Dr Singh’s “unofficial power—sharing agreement” with UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi has “tied his hands and that he lacks the clout to go against other party stalwarts.”

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Business Line
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: India’s Military Inferiority Complex

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: India’s Military Inferiority Complex
*Indian officials are preoccupied by China’s growing military power. They would do better to fix their own incoherent defense establishment.

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Trefor Moss - The Diplomat

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 24, 2012: Modern India is economically and strategically buoyant, and has every reason to feel confident as the 21^st century progresses. So it’s strange to think that this same confident place is developing an inferiority complex over China’s military power.

Never mind that New Delhi just announced a hefty 13 percent defense budget increase for 2012-13, or that the country is now the world’s biggest importer of military systems. Most Indian commentators seem to have digested these two pieces of news by focusing on the downside: that the country’s $39 billion defense budget remains quite modest compared with the $106 billion military budget at China’s disposal.

The critics should bear two things in mind before giving into defense budget envy. First, a 13 percent increase is actually very generous in the context of an Indian economy that’s only expected to grow by7.6 percent in the coming year. Larger increases aren’t only unaffordable but also strategically untenable, as they would alarm neighboring countries.

Second, the Indian military has long since accepted two facts of strategic life: that the Chinese military will always be bigger; and that it will always be richer.

That doesn’t mean the Chinese military will necessarily be better, and overcoming the comparative disadvantages of wealth and scale is what Indian military strategy, at least vis-à-vis China, is all about. The solution comes in two parts. First, the Indian military knows it has to focus on quality rather than quantity, investing in weapon systems that China, hindered by international arms embargoes, cannot match. It then also means capitalizing on regional unease about China’s rise and on forging smart alliances. China might be more powerful, but India knows it can be more popular.

The Indian media is therefore over hasty in viewing defense matters through the China inferiority lens. The Times of India, for example, headlined last week’s defense budget announcement by bemoaning the fact that the “Military plays catch-up but China [is] a long march ahead.”

That’s a self-defeating way to look at things. The important questions Indians should be asking are whether their government is giving defense the resources it needs – and based on successive double-digit spending increases, you’d have to say that it is; and whether that money is being used wisely to bankroll a coherent military modernization strategy. It’s when you look more closely at this second point that you begin to appreciate that India – not China – is its own worst enemy.

Writing in the Business Standard, Ajai Shukla observed this week that the Indian Army is being starved of funds, while the Navy and Air Force soak up all the investment. Indeed, the numbers don’t look good from the Army’s perspective. The Air Force has a capital expenditure to operational cost ratio of two to one; the ratio for the Navy is about three to two. By contrast, the Army spends six times as much on day-to-day running costs as it does on new equipment.

However, such ratios are a fact of life when you have an army of over a million active personnel whose poor pay and conditions you are attempting to upraise over time. China, with its 2 million increasingly well-paid troops, has exactly the same headache of rising everyday bills eating away at budget increases. And there’s also no getting away from the fact that India, despite its expanding resources, can’t buy everything at once. With several costly Air Force and Navy programs currently underway, such as the procurement of the Dassault Rafale fighter and new naval frigates, the Army has been obliged to wait in line. Now, it can rightfully claim to have moved to the front of the queue.

Of greater concern is the tenacious ineptitude of India’s defense bureaucracy. In the last financial year, as in most others, the Defense Ministry failed to spend all of the cash at its disposal thanks purely to red tape. That’s the first thing that needs to be fixed.

The government then needs to redouble its efforts to introduce a functioning procurement system. More often than not, India’s attempts to buy equipment become tortuous and wasteful. In January, Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh, himself a recent victim of his country’s eccentric bureaucracy, suggested wearily that, “the procurement game is a version of snakes and ladders where there is no ladder but only snakes, and if the snakes bite you somewhere, the whole thing comes back to zero.” His exasperation centered on the army’s efforts, initiated 10 years ago, to buy new artillery; the process has just resulted in the blacklistingof six foreign defense contractors but, as yet, no new guns.

Another example is the acquisition of 75 much-needed Pilatus PC-7 Mk II trainer aircraft, announced last year, which now faces delays – like so many procurements before it – over allegations of irregularities in the bidding process. Worryingly, though perhaps predictably, questions are now also being asked about the flagship Rafale procurement.

Third, the government should re-evaluate the role of the domestic defense industry, which currently does a lot of things badly. It should be made to start doing a few things well. India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) recently complained that it doesn’t have enough money – but that has never been its problem. The agency has a track record of initiating overambitious programs and then executing them poorly, as the travails of the Tejas light combat aircraft, to name but one example, continue to demonstrate. For the sake of both the taxpayer and the military, the Defense Ministry should focus the DRDO and the defense industry on developing a realistic core of indigenous capabilities, and then just import everything else.

So India is wrong to feel inferior just because China has more soldiers and more money. The problem is the incoherence of India’s defense establishment, from industry through to government – therein lies the inferiority. It’s a danger to Indian security that has nothing to do with China, and that’s within India’s own power to put right.

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*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Trefor Moss - The Diplomat
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News - SYRIA UNREST: Arab League Ratchets Up Pressure On Syria's Assad

Defense War News Updates: DTN News - SYRIA UNREST: Arab League Ratchets Up Pressure On Syria's Assad

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Reuters

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada/RABAT, Morocco - November 17, 2011: The Arab League has moved a step closer to imposing economic sanctions on Syria while army defectors took the armed struggle against President Bashar al-Assad to a new level by attacking an intelligence complex on the edge of Damascus.

Further intensifying the international pressure on Assad to end his repression of eight months of protests, France withdrew its ambassador from Syria and Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Paris was working with the Arab League on a draft U.N. resolution.

Western countries have tightened sanctions on Syria and on Monday Jordan's King Abdullah became the first Arab head of state to urge Assad to quit.

The Syrian army defectors attacked an intelligence complex on the edge of Damascus in a high-profile assault early on Wednesday that showed how close the popular uprising against Assad's rule now is to sliding into armed conflict.

Last month Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Damascus, but the Arab League's decision last weekend to suspend Syria has given international moves new momentum.

On the day the suspension came into force, the League's foreign ministers met in the Moroccan capital with a Syrian flag next to an empty chair where the Syrian minister, who boycotted the meeting, would have sat.

The League -- which normally shies away from decisive action against its members -- decided to ask its experts to draft recommendations on economic sanctions on Syria.

The decision brought a plan announced at the weekend one step closer to implementation.

The Arab foreign ministers also gave Damascus three days to implement a road map agreed this month to end the bloodshed and allow in observers, though they did not say what would happen if Syria failed to comply.

Asked if the ultimatum was a last attempt at diplomacy, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim al-Thani told reporters: "We do not want to talk about a last-ditch attempt because I do not want this to sound like a warning.

"What I can say is that we are close to the end of the road as far as the (League's) efforts on this front are concerned."

The Arab League has stopped short of calling for Assad's departure or proposing any Libya-style military intervention, but its ostracism of Syria is a blow to a country whose ruling Baath party puts Arab nationalism at the center of its credo.

In Damascus, Assad supporters threw stones at the embassy of the United Arab Emirates, in one of the most secure districts of the city, and smeared its walls with graffiti, witnesses said.

FIGHTING BACK

In the early months of the uprising, attempts by security forces to crush mainly peaceful protests accounted for most of the violence. But since August there have been growing reports of army defectors and armed civilians fighting back.

Activists said Free Syrian Army fighters fired machineguns and rockets at a large Air Force Intelligence complex on the northern edge of the capital at about 2:30 a.m. (0030 GMT).

A gunfight ensued and helicopters circled over the complex, on the Damascus-Aleppo highway. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Syrian state media did not mention the attack.

Washington said it had few details and no confirmation of the incident, but that Assad was courting trouble.

"It's not surprising that we are now seeing this kind of violence," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

"We don't condone it in any way, shape or form. But let's be very clear that it is the brutal tactics of Assad and his regime in dealing with what began as a non-violent movement (that) is now taking Syria down a very dangerous path."

LIBYA PARALLEL

Speaking earlier in Rabat, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu compared Syria with Libya, where rebels captured, humiliated and killed Muammar Gaddafi last month.

"The regime should meet the demands of its people," he said. "The collective massacres in Syria and ... the bloodshed cannot continue like this."

Turkey has spent years courting its neighbor, but is now leading regional efforts to pit pressure on Assad.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi criticised the Arab League for "acting in a way that will hurt the security of the region." He told the official news agency IRNA that Syria, an ally of Iran since 1980, had repeatedly pledged to meet legitimate popular demands and enact reforms.

"Unfortunately, some countries believe that they are outside the crisis ... but they are mistaken because if a crisis happens they will be entangled by its consequences."

Syrian authorities have banned most independent media. They blame the unrest on "armed terrorist gangs" and foreign-backed militants who they say have killed 1,100 soldiers and police.

Hundreds of people have been killed this month, one of the bloodiest periods of the revolt.

Syria says it remains committed to the Arab peace plan, which calls for the withdrawal of troops from urban areas, the release of prisoners and a dialogue with the opposition.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Zakia Abdennebi in Rabat, Dominic Evans in Beirut, John Irish in Paris, Mahmoud Habboush in Dubai and Ramin Mostafavi in Tehran; Writing by Alistair Lyon and Christian Lowe; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Reuters

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*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News

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