The way the US Presidency of Donald Trump has been unraveling it is quite clear that the Russian connection is just not coincidental, that it has derived its return on investment through Mr Trump. The latest move that Trump has made where the US has pulled out its military from Syria is a clear signal and probably a trigger for Mattis to resign as the US Secretary for Defense. If Mattis as a former General of the USMC and leader in his own right viewed the limits of US military power the reasons are not hard to find. American intelligentsia has viewed her wars in the Persian Gulf region as not being strategic winners, in how Iraq now has a more pro Iran government, or how the ISIS was an inadvertent offshoot of US CIA backed programme to wear down the Iraqi Shia resistance, and how to put this genie back in the bottle America actually went begging to Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah Shia bloc, besides arming the Yazidi women and Kurdish women to take the battle into the heart of ISIS. It had to rework its alliance with Turkey, acquiescing in the coup that Erdogan has fashioned to consolidate power in that country and actually stood quite exposed within its NATO for being at odds for reasons of its own making on the Continent.
So Mattis wrote those lines and between those lines stood the subtle and not so subtle acknowledgement of the debt that US owed to so many in her fight in Syria. Then there is a larger game here at play, which Mattis alludes to, when he says that while agreeing with Trump that US cannot be the policeman of the world by herself, she must also not be seen abandoning alliances that have lasted the entire of the post World War 2 period to this day! And the way he puts it in perspective about Russia and China and the debt owed by America as ‘tools of common defense’ makes it abundantly clear the exact nature of differences the Secretary has with his Supreme Commander.We can expect Mattis to be called names and shamed by Donald, and we can expect that the US withdrawal of troops from not just Syria but Afghanistan as just ordered by Trump as going to be sold as electoral promises whose dates have come up, there being nothing stranger than pure coincidence to these orders.
Yet actually, can US legislators in a future investigation of the Trump Presidency actually nail the Russian connection that we all seem to agree upon? That Trump’s camp has not just colluded for a Presidential run off, but have compromised American independent policy by suborning it to Putin’s interests? And if that be so, how much would that affect America’s own stature in the eyes of the world?
It is not that lobbying did not exist. In India for example, there was a great belief that Morarji Desai was a US stooge, and spying for the CIA, there are names of people who have even served India’s military at the highest posts who have been linked to America at this level. In the case of Pakistan, Indonesia or Thailand or Bangladesh, the links were more public and prominent, and Allah and America being the two arbiters in our neighbourhood is a subject of immense study by strategic academics! So for pygmies it is ironical comeuppance that the Big Brother himself is being manipulated by Russia.
Foreign affairs do not really affect people with immediacy that say a domestic vote or policy does, hence lobbying is actually a advocacy and whether lobbying should be allowed at all in democracy is to accept extraneous forces in democracy in the larger picture that sum of all expectations and actions is reaffirmed in the ballot renewal in any case. So when the UPA had its NAC, until it was flagged and disbanded under the ‘office for profit’ clause, this was the official way of a lobbying clique seen in independent India. Currently the various fora of the RSS are getting their say, which is another variation of lobbying. So when cow protection, traditional systems of healing or traditional knowledge sources get government funding due to RSS organisations and their lobbying, some of the general voting public may approve of these measures, and some may not. Lot of NGO level advocacy was viewed suspiciously by the RSS as vitiating India’s polity, hence the Modi government took a stringent view of NGO funding and licensing, having in the past four years shackled and tied up that space with regulation, which is also a matter for study by political observers. Then there is always the way governments staff their higher organisation that makes persons with certain political lineage or ideological affiliation influence policy.
So why not legitimise lobbying in India. Remember Nira Radia, a famous lobbyist who caused slander even to the fair name of Tatas? Lobbyist exist in India whether we acknowledge it or not, so how we deal with lobbying is what is going to help us shape our polity in the future. Look at the Anna Hazare movement as a lobbying effort. They forced the Parliament to enact a series of laws creating an officious public ombudsman for governance. The Lok Pal theoretically would be the person who should have examined the Rafale deal in terms of the Government of India Conduct of Business rules. A job which went to the Supreme Court through a PIL. From the perspective of credibility, judicial clean chits are far greater traction with our masses than some constitutional authority. Long long ago, CAG, CVC and CBI have lost their credibility in high profile cases that involve politicos. So how would another layer in the form of Lok Pal act differently? Yet thanks to extra constitutional powers that we accorded to Anna Hazare, we saw a ridiculous UPA cabinet interacting with the ideologues certified by Anna and much of the sheen the UPA lost was because the Indian voter felt that this lot had so much to hide that they used the cover of Anna, falling at his feet and being eager to please him, which is in utter contrast to the disdain with which Mr Modi has dealt with him.
So lobby led legislation may not be actually beneficial, and India must maintain the sanctity of her legislative process, by insisting not just with Naxals but with these pressure groups to abandon guerrilla tactics and join the political mainstream, place themselves on the ballot to advocate their cause.
Am sure that Americans would not feel cheated if they had known that Trump was pro Russia. They would probably have still elected him if he had proposed that he would make friendship with Putin his priority. They are feeling cheated because Trump and his team have not come with a clean hand. In India, we were clear what the vote for Mr Modi entailed, that it would bring in the RSS bandwagon, tails and all, swaggering their swadeshi jargon into our high offices. Even so, would it not have been better if say a Gurumurthy or a Ram Madhav or even Shri Mohan Bhagwat had actually been on a ballot? After all, democracy is meant to subject to scrutiny all ideas and persons who wish to stand for office, to use the sovereign powers vested with that office while their terms last, by the discerning voter. Such voter screening offers undiluted legitimacy to the steering of policy. So I feel the time for official lobbying, registering lobbyists and action groups has come. I feel that their lobbying must be permitted through out the political process, from candidacy to conduct of legislative business. The more transparent these hidden hands become the more faith we will as voters have on our governments. It would avoid the charge that Nagpur is running India or Putin is running America, which would be a wonderful thing. What says?
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/20/politics/james-mattis-resignation-letter-doc/index.html
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