The terrorist attack on our naval base in Karachi took me back to something I had read in 2008 about a RAND Corporation study suggesting that a war between India and Pakistan would revive the flagging US economy. At the time I filed it away as the usual wishful gibberish of think tanks. But when the attack took place it occurred to me: is someone is trying to start another India-Pakistan war?
RAND is a semi-official Corporation that receives some federal funding. On December 26, 2008, Kurt Nimmo (another ‘conspiracy theorist’?) wrote in Infowars that Paul Watson and Yihan Dai (more ‘conspiracy theorists’?), had said in Prison Planet on October 30 that, “According to reports, out of top Chinese mainstream news outlets, the RAND Corporation recently presented a shocking proposal to the Pentagon in which it lobbied for a war to be started with a major foreign power in an attempt to stimulate the American economy and prevent a recession. The reports cite French media news sources as having uncovered the proposal, in which RAND suggested that the $700 billion dollars that has been earmarked to bailout Wall Street and failing banks instead be used to finance a new war which would in turn re-invigorate the flagging stock markets…A war between India and Pakistan may provide an ideal pretext for US involvement in the region…Reportedly, the RAND proposal brazenly urged that a new war could be launched to benefit the economy, but stressed that the target country would have to be a major influential power, and not a smaller country on the scale of Afghanistan or Iraq.” The story quoted Reuters saying on December 24: “Pakistani militants have already said they would rally to help the Pakistani military in the event of war against India. Public sympathy and support for militant groups would soar as they would be seen as national defenders against the ‘real enemy’, India.”
The story goes on: “A war between Pakistan and India and Pakistan’s abandonment of the GWOT in its tribal regions would provide the US with the near perfect pretext to attack targets inside Pakistan…An earlier report of the CIA predicted a Yugoslavia-like fate for Pakistan in a decade with civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial rivalries as seen in Balochistan.”
Literal thinking made us believe that the Taliban couldn’t carry out such a precision attack without ‘outside help’. Our navy had been turned into a ‘One Eyed Jack’. That helps India, so India must be the suspect. I’m not saying it is; I’m not saying it isn’t – not until I have proof. In today’s world the obvious usually is what America’s Deep State’s strategic communications and perception management wants us to believe.
Pause please. Why are the Taliban not capable of carrying out such an attack when they have defeated America and its NATO mercenaries and their fathers beat the Soviet Union before them? Competence is no proof of complicity.
Consider: would India, Pakistan and China too, which could perforce get sucked into such a war, not do a cost-benefit analysis before embarking on such a suicidal enterprise?
1. Given that all three are nuclear laced, all three would be losers. America would be the winner. Russia would stand by.
2. Much of India, Pakistan and a lot of China would be destroyed.
3. The economic march of China and India would be pushed back by years.
4. Millions of innocent people would be killed.
5. Entire cities would be destroyed.
6. Pakistan and India could be Balkanised because both suffer from many horizontal and vertical fissures. There are fissures in China too.
7. The entire region would be destabilised and national boundaries redrawn.
8. Terrorism would engulf the entire subcontinent, China’s Xinjiang province and spill over elsewhere in the region.
9. Terrorists of other hues would emerge, each with their own agenda.
For the life of me, I cannot see any benefit in such perfidy, only Mutually Assured Destruction – MAD. Only the stupid – and India and Pakistan have a surfeit of them – who think with their egos would consider such an enterprise desirable.
Who benefits?
1. The country that is the engine of the global economy – America.
2. The engine of the US economy is its military-industrial complex (MIC).
3. The fuel that drives the MIC is constant new weapons orders.
4. The source of that fuel is war.
5. An additional benefit of a war directly involving America is the chance to test its latest strategies and weapons in actual war conditions.
6. War between China and India would set back America’s economic and trade competitors, helping its economy recover.
Got it? Satan wept at such perfidy for even he couldn’t better it.
America’s first constitutional president, Major General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the continental army, realised that he had won the war against Britain with British weapons. This was untenable. That idea planted the seed of what was to grow into America’s military industrial complex. The warriors of the complex are:
1. Extreme right-wingers.
2. The Pentagon.
3. US intelligence agencies.
4. Wall Street.
5. Large corporate syndicates including and other than from the MIC.
6. Christians of certain denominations.
7. Zionists.
8. Much of the US and western media.
9. Think tanks of a certain kind.
10. Certain academics.
Third World idiots and sellouts help America.
1. Most rulers.
2. Most politicians.
3. Some military officers, retired and serving.
4. Some bureaucrats, retired and serving.
5. Many NGOs.
6. Many journalists, witting and unwitting.
7. Certain academics.
8. The greedy and the stupid that provide ‘inside help’ for money or think that they are doing the ‘holy work’ of non-state terrorists when they are actually helping state terrorists pretending to be non-state terrorists.
9. Lightweight noveau riche informers who crave instant respectability after ‘making’ instant money.
They sell themselves cheap – visas, green cards, jobs, medical treatment, stints in think tanks to write books and papers the US likes since such things are more credible coming from people of the target country, admission of children in Ivy League universities…
Are India, Pakistan and China that stupid that they cannot see the obvious? Unlike America, we have histories and civilisations spanning five millennia and more. When it comes to the crunch, millennia old wisdom normally prevails.
The writer is a political analyst. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Time Humayun Gauhar should start talking about the sins committed by Musharraf, the tin pot dictator, who sold this nation and its sovereignity for a song.
Gouhar saheb,your article is nothing but mere imaginative intellectual execise with no way leading anywhere.India is not Pakistan who work or take any action on any other county’s suggestions.India can never follow the advice proposed by any American without considering its long term fallout.India and Indian people never like or wish a poor ,weak, tattered Pakistan because a weak polity will definitely fall prey to nefarious design of terrorism.It is true terrorist had/have full support pakistan’s establishment and it grows under the helpful shadow of pak military and intelligence organisation.Only terrorism can provoke another war with Pakistan which will have complete whole hearted support of Indian public and not on any American advice.
What is the recommendation?
The RAND reference is erroneous. Contrary to various online accounts, RAND has not advocated that Pakistan, India, or any other country conduct war to advance recovery of the U.S. economy. This notion is simply a rumor, with no foundation in fact. We do not know how those who generated the rumor arrived at their conclusion. We issued a statement explaining this in 2008: http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/10/31.html.
RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. Our recent research on Pakistan, India, and other countries may be downloaded at http://www.rand.org/hot_topics/. Our research on national security may be found at http://www.rand.org/research_areas/national_secur…. RAND is strictly nonpartisan. Our core values are quality and objectivity.
Jeffrey Hiday
Director, Office of Media Relations
RAND Corporation
Arlington VA, USA
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