Haunted by Chaos

Title: Haunted by Chaos – China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping

Author: Sulmaan Wasif Khan

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9780674987760

Pages: 320

China is now the world's second superpower that harbours a clear ambition and an action plan to be the first in a few decades. But the political system of China is fundamentally different from that of the United States, whom it wishes to supplant. Civic liberties are unheard of in China, and the Communist Party has been immensely successful in shielding its people from the radars of the ubiquitous communication devices offered by technology. All major social media sites such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China. Fear of social chaos is what drives the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the state to curtail personal freedom. The country has been under the rule of puppet kings, warlords and rival party factions for a long time in the last two centuries. Even the much fabled celestial kingdom was not entirely free from the threatening forces of Central Asia, Mongolia and the Manchus. All this made the state paranoid about the safety and integrity of the country. Stability was gained only in 1949 when the CCP drove the Guomindang across the straits of Taiwan to hold sway over the entire mainland. Even then the party was always awake to the threat from within and without. Its rulers adopted a Grand Strategy in dealing with other nations. They considered economic well-being as the prime factor that guaranteed the stability of the state. This required trade with foreign partners. China was willing to strike a deal with neighbours even when a persistent dispute over a border territory or an island in the sea stood unresolved. This was put in place by politicians who were not men of the staff colleges or management institutes. Theirs was a peasant’s wisdom, a sense of where they wanted to wind up and how. There was no overall master plan and there were instances when human emotions bypassed strategy, ending in failure. China geared up military power, diplomacy, economic planning and domestic policy towards long term interests. This is neatly chronicled by Sulmaan Wasif Khan, who is an assistant professor of international history and Chinese foreign relations at the Fletcher school at Tufts University. Even though I searched hard on the Internet, his nationality could not be ascertained.

This book looks into the reigns of all the leaders of modern China such as Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping. However, the first two were responsible for consolidating political power and unleashing its economic potential respectively. All the others have been content to maintain their hold on the rudder and lead China safely through the vortices and rocks of international trade and commerce. The present incumbent Xi Jinping shows signs of greater aspirations and a longer stay at the helm as seen by acts such as engraving Xi Jinping Thought as a guiding principle of China on the lines of Mao Zedong Thought. Only time can tell how far he would succeed in this venture. It cannot be denied that the country was glued together by the pragmatic streak exhibited by Mao when he maintained room for compromise in his deals with rivals although it was left unwritten and informal. He allowed a mild form of capitalism under the euphemism of democratic economy.

Mao, who can be legitimately termed the father of modern China, employed a grand strategy of the judicious use of force, diplomatic outreach and appropriate management of political economy to annex territories outside his control such as Tibet and Xinjiang where the clout of the Han community was minimal. On the external front, he put forward the famous five principles of foreign policy for peaceful coexistence that included mutual respect of territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual noninterference, mutual equality and benefit, non-aggression and peaceful coexistence. However, when an opportunity knocked on the door, these principles did not hinder Mao in waging a war with India on an arcane border dispute and forcibly annex its territory. China's plan was to limit threats to national security by maintaining as many friendly relations as possible. He was not averse to open up trade relations even with the US, if it stopped backing the breakaway state of Taiwan. All in all, Mao has been successful in keeping the state whole and establishing a balance of power with external parties, even though his failed campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward resulted in manmade famines in which 40 million people perished.

While Mao was a master of political theory, it was his successor Deng Xiaoping who steered the economy and the people to prosperity. Instability was the one thing that Deng wished to avoid at all costs. Instability could tip into chaos at which point all hopes of modernization would die. His firm belief was that the economy was the final guarantor of national security, and continued the established foreign policy that insisted on overall amicable relationship with a foreign partner even when differences on specific issues continued to plague the relations occasionally. This strategy found its expression in the islands of the East and South China Seas which is contested between China, all other Southeast Asian nations and Japan. The festering territorial disputes did not hinder China in striking up lasting business ties with those countries. Deng’s realistic approach harmoniously solved the issues connected with the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control after the 99-year British lease came to an end in 1997. Hong Kong was the epitome of Western capitalist economy and democracy. It was expected that Hong Kong’s financial supremacy would be irrevocably lost when it came under China’s archaic socialist philosophy. Deng stole the wind out of his detractors’ sails with the idea of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. With this, he could foist capitalism in the island, while holding on to socialism in the mainland. There have been protests brewing in the erstwhile British enclave as its free people could not digest the Chinese state’s maxim of guaranteeing economic benefits, even if uneven, in exchange of political obedience.

The book is neatly written in a crisp style and encapsulates the history of the nation from the Second World War. The author credits Mao with far greater insight and pragmatism than merited by facts and takes great pains to stay clear of controversy when recent events are described. His stunning achievement is in identifying the unbroken thread of China's Grand Strategy from the times of Mao to Xi Jinping. At the same time, Khan also showcases the instances in which it veered wildly from the strategy when nationalist sentiments of the leaders came into play in foreign policy. These are displayed by China's humiliating defeat at the hands of Vietnamese forces in the brief war of 1979 and the Taiwan missile crisis of 1996. When all aspects and arguments of the book are taken into account, the ineluctable conclusion one reaches is that Wasif Khan has made a good job in the face of great odds.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Lucknow Boy

Title: Lucknow Boy – A Memoir

Author: Vinod Mehta

Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2011 (First)

ISBN: 9780670085293

Pages: 325

Building a newspaper or magazine up from scratch is a tedious job. Apparently, people don't relish such a prospect. Matters became very complicated in the post-liberalization era when India's publishing industry opened up to serious money coming from abroad. It is nothing short of a miracle that a single man was able to create not one, but four publications by the dint of hard work and the intuition on which way the wind is blowing. On account of the establishment of journals such as Indian Post, Independent, Pioneer and Outlook, Vinod Mehta is sometimes hailed as the ultimate launch man of Indian publishing. His experience in taking these illustrious publications from the drawing board to the street stall is unrivalled. Vinod Mehta was an Indian journalist, editor and political commentator. He is the author of several books and this one is an autobiography of his eventful life as an editor in journals of national repute.

Quite unusual for a man who pioneered mainstream media, Mehta began his life as editor of the men's magazine Debonair. He always found something that should be removed to attract attention whether in the magazine or its portrayed models. The periodical which had begun with male seminude pictures had closed down after just six months. Mehta infused new life into it by sporting serious articles interspersed with half-clad models. Known for his boldness in exposure with the pen – no pun intended – he lives up to his name by mentioning a shocking episode during the Emergency. The dreaded Information and Broadcasting minister V C Shukla wanted a meeting with him along with the next issue’s centre spread pictures in design stage. At the end of the interview the minister appropriated the most revealing photograph for himself (p.89)

The author's USP is his fearlessness in writing about the idiosyncrasies of political leaders and business tycoons. He had a tenuous relationship with the latter on account of them being the proprietors of the publishing houses. He was not averse to take risks. When Sunday observer was first published in 1981, it was the first time in India that a publication came out only on Sundays which combined the good features of a newspaper and a magazine. Mehta’s most controversial episode might have been the naming of the Maharashtra leader Y B Chavan as the CIA mole in Indira Gandhi's cabinet in the 1970s. The mayhem let loose by the revelation forced the management of The Independent to eject Mehta and it published an apology. However, the author discloses in this memoir that after further consultations with Seymour Hersh, he has come to know reliably that Morarji Desai was the mole who worked for the CIA by accepting $20,000 per year through his son Kanti Desai. The unrepentant declaration that it was not Chavan but Desai is galling and sheds light at the casual disregard of the journalist in making and marring the careers of respectable people. This is evidenced by an incident when the author was working for the Pioneer. Its proprietor, Lalit Mohan Thapar, was a friend of the politician Sharad Pawar and the author had no compunction to plant a story projecting Pawar as a possible candidate to be the next prime minister. In the same magazine itself, Mehta suspended a provoking interview with the army chief S F Rodriguez from publishing in which the veteran soldier had labeled the entire political class as bandicoots.

It seems that Vinod Mehta had a strong inclination to side with the Congress Party and he feels no shame in flaunting it. In fact, he advises novices to the profession that it is just about okay. In his inimitable style, he professes that neutrality of journalists is a pompous myth. The Nira Radia tapes, which find mention in the book, narrates the unholy nexus between politicians, journalists and wheeler dealers. Barkha Dath and Vir Sanghvi were the journalists who got caught in the tape. Mehta describes about his attacks against Vajpayee as prime minister and Narendra Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat. When the frivolous tirades became unbearable, Vajpayee ordered an income tax raid on the proprietor and the attacks dramatically stopped as if at the flick of a switch.

Being a person from Lucknow, memories of his dear hometown lend the book its title. The author shares a glimpse of life in that city immediately after independence. The upper crest had a carefree life in which humour occupied a central place in the scheme of things. Those who didn't laugh and make others laugh were considered dangerous people. But the old world charm of Oudh’s social life was soon folding back against the flow of migrants coming from Pakistan. The Lucknow aristocracy was in clear retreat, selling their heritage as the refugees gobbled up businesses with their superior ability to persevere and adapt to changing conditions. However Metha realizes that shedding tears for the gun-flogging and chandelier-hawking rajas and nawabs was like shedding tears for the extinction of dinosaurs. However, all was not well even by the author’s narrative. The Hindu-Muslim divide crept even into the sphere of sports such as Table Tennis. In the 50s and 60s Lucknow, the table tennis scene was highly communalized. Clubs were organized on the basis of religion. The Bengali club, Firangi Mahal club, Sanyal club and others were fierce rivals mainly due to communal hostility.

The author’s mastery over the language is impeccable and should be a source of envy to any editor. This book is a treasure trove of delectable idioms, words and phrases. It is a must-read for all aspiring journalists and language professionals. Mehta was an ardent representative of India’s elite, and so his professional support to Arundhati Roy and the Maoists who protested eviction of tribals for the commencement of mining operations is a bit labored. This Anglophone journalist whose telephone number was in the contact list of the most powerful people in the country and who feeds Italian cheese to his pet dog wants the readers to be convinced of his earnest desire to protect the rights of the tribals. The author has been candid – perhaps a bit more so – in portraying even the most intimate moments of his life. On the negative side, he seems to get carried away by praise as seen in the verbatim reproduction of the praise heaped by peers on the success of his publishing ventures.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Chernobyl – History of a Tragedy

Title: Chernobyl – History of a Tragedy

Author: Serhii Plokhy

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9780241349021

Pages: 404

Weather you bat for or against it, nuclear power generation has a certain charm associated with it. It is non-polluting, clean and good value for money. The energy produced by an entire rail rake-load of coal in a thermal station can be generated by nuclear fuel that can be comfortably put in the boot of a passenger car. Besides, it is a product of twentieth century physics unlike thermal, hydro- or wind, the principles of which were with mankind from the earliest times. The risks associated with the safe operation of a nuclear reactor and the disposal of spent fuel makes the designers vary of embracing it. The public is also normally averse to have a working reactor in their midst, having raised through textbooks showing the mushroom clouds of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear energy is, in fact quite safe, having caused only three major accidents in its history spanning seven decades - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima and the last one was not due to any human error. The accident that attracted international attention was the disaster in Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine of the erstwhile USSR on 26 April 1986. Thirty-one people were killed in the mishap, two by the explosion itself and twenty-nine from the effects of radiation. While these figures are not awful, the fallout of radioactive material that spread to various parts of Ukraine and Europe as a whole had caused an immense health threat to millions of people. This book tells a detailed story of how the disaster occurred, what are the steps that led to it, who were involved in and after the accident and how the regime coped with international public opinion in the aftermath. Serhii Plokhy is a Ukrainian-American historian and author specializing in the history of Ukraine. He serves as professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University.

The book makes a detailed study of the Chernobyl plant and the explosive impact of the accident, but the figures seem to be slightly exaggerated. The blast was said to be equivalent to 500 Hiroshima bombs. Also, each reactor had 500 pounds of enriched Uranium as fuel. If the other three reactors of the plant had been damaged by the explosion then hardly any living and breathing organism would have remained on the planet, the author claims. However this assertion is simply hyperbole. The explosion that occurred was due to steam at very high pressure which caused radioactive material scatter into the atmosphere. No comparison with Hiroshima there! It was the third largest nuclear plant in the world with four reactors producing 1000 megawatt of electricity each and a fifth one under construction. The construction of the plant had begun in 1970 and the first reactor became operational in 1977. The fourth reactor which caused the accident was functional for just two years and three months when it was destroyed. A flourishing little city called Prypiat had developed near the site to house the workers. After the accident, the town was evacuated and still remains as a ghost town like a modern-day Pompeii. The town hears the footfall of only the occasional tourist. Plokhy has made use of newly available archival material and KGB documents.

The constant refrain of the Soviet academic and technical community was that the operators of the plant were to be blamed for the catastrophe. This is given special attention in the book and debunked as a myth. The reactor which belonged to a type designated as RBMK was inherently cheaper to fabricate than the rival type VVER. The most fundamental difference between the two is that in the RBMK, water is boiled to steam in the reactor core itself and the steam is used to drive a turbine to produce power. The VVER heats up pressured water in the core which is then used to make steam from another independent water circuit on which turbine is run. The RBMK scored only on the cost parameter by letting go of many safety-related structures such as the concrete containing dome that surrounds any reactor. They are virtually open to atmosphere. In Chernobyl itself, a fuel channel had burst in 1982 after repair and radiation shot up to 10 times the normal but was eventually contained. Several such episodes prompted the authorities to impose censorship on reporting of nuclear accidents in the country. Moreover, leakage of radioactive water at the rate of 50 cubic metres per hour was continuously coming out from the drains from numerous small leaks inside. The management was oblivious to such flaws and concentrated only on increasing the output. Just the previous year, in 1985, the plant produced 10% more energy than its target partly by cutting time spent on repairs.

Almost a hundred pages are reserved to describe the fateful events that unfolded on the two days of April 26 and 27. The maintenance team wanted to conduct a test to determine how long the lubricating oil pumps of the turbine would run when the steam input is cut off. The test was scheduled to begin at 2 pm, but the grid authority denied permission to shutdown the reactor. The emergency cooling water valves were already closed for this test and nobody bothered to reopen the heavy valves. This did not contribute to the accident but serves as an indicator of the lax culture of safety in the plant. The test was eventually conducted at 1.23 am the next day and the answer came out to be 40 seconds. But in the process, the reactor became hopelessly unstable and one erroneous thing led to other big blunders. Very soon, the reaction became uncontrolled when the operators tried to take an emergency shutdown. Two big steam explosions resulted in the 200-ton containment barrier flying into the air. The graphite blocks and fuel rods of the reactor caught fire when it was showered all over the place. These were deadly radioactive. The firefighters who tried to extinguish the fire from the roof of the reactor hall got sick within half an hour. The radiation sickness started with a severe headache, dry throat and nausea. Even though the fire could be contained by 7 am, most of the early firefighters had absorbed lethal doses of radiation. Most of them died later.

What had happened thus far was pardonable to a certain extent. Design flaws and human errors can happen anywhere. But, the suppression of information about the accident could take place only in a dictatorship such as the one run by the Communists. The authorities kept mum on the terrible happening while children freely roamed the streets of Prypiat where seven weddings took place during daytime. While radioactive dust was settling over the civilian population, the party officials progressed through confusion, disbelief and denial. This was not new in the Soviet Union. In 1957, they had similarly suppressed disclosure of an explosion in a plutonium facility in Ozersk, which was almost in the middle of the gargantuan Russian vastness. But Chernobyl was near the border and two days later, radioactivity was detected in the Forsmark nuclear plant in Sweden, situated 1257 km away. Soviets had to break silence at 9 pm on that day through a terse announcement on TV. Even then, no newspaper published the story. Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, was 130 km away but radiation levels soared. However, the party was defiant and promptly carried out the May Day parade through its streets, risking the lives of the participants. Even general bulletins on what to do in case of radiation sickness had to be got cleared by the Ukrainian politburo. The first televised address on how to cope with radiation was aired ten days later by which time the people no longer trusted the party and the government.

The collective effort to contain the damaged reactor is a heroic tale of self-sacrifice and dedication of the Soviet people. Volunteers from other services called liquidators were used to mop up radioactive debris from the premises while tons of sand was heaped over the reactor through dangerous maneuvers by helicopter pilots. These volunteers were mobilized by the party apparatus and many of them would suffer severe health problems in the coming years. The military decontaminated fields and villages sometimes by burying entire forests by bulldozing. It is estimated that the abandoned town of Prypiat would not be habitable for the next 20,000 years. Plokhy then links the disaster to the rise of dissidence in Ukraine. Organisations such as Rukh and Green World took root under the guise of environmental activism. As Ukraine turned Independent, it instituted schemes to help the victims. A Chernobyl tax of 12% was slapped on corporate income. At the same time, it reduced the acceptable level of lifetime radiation exposure to 7 rem from 35 rem.

What happened next was a climb down from principles as the nascent Ukrainian state battled hard on the economic front. It wanted to close down Chernobyl, but could not do it on account of the cheap power it produced and the considerable employment opportunities it provided. The other three reactors continued production even in the face of heightened radiation risks. Accidents continued to occur. In 1991, a major fire in Unit 2 caused by a faulty switch in the turbine destroyed part of the roof of turbine hall. Unit 2 was immediately closed and the other two units continued production till December 15, 2000 when at last the Chernobyl plant was permanently shut down. Construction of two new nuclear plants was going on at that time at Rivne, and Khmelnytskyi which were connected to the grid in 2004. The country has not divorced nuclear power even though the economic fallout of the disaster was heavy on the whole, since seven million people had received some form of compensation.

The author was a professor of a Ukrainian university at the time Chernobyl threw up the radioactive material. Readers get a first-hand assessment of the sentiments of the Ukrainian public on the shifting stands of their Soviet masters. Written in an elegant, flowing style, the book is very enjoyable in spite of the macabre content. Plokhy is successful in bringing out the soul of Ukrainian resistance to ideological domination. Some photos should have been added to the narrative to give it some more visual appeal.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Nasser – My Husband

Title: Nasser – My Husband

Author: Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser

Translator: Shereen Mosaad

Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013 (First published 2011)

ISBN: 9789774166112

Pages: 122

Even though the Middle East has not been under colonial domination at any time in its history, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War caused most of the territory coming under the rule of colonial powers like Britain and France. When colonialism beat a retreat post-World War 2, the Arab world came under immense ferment. Monarchy found it difficult to hold on to power in most of the countries. A military coup in 1952 under Gamal Abdel Nasser ended the reign of king Farouk in Egypt and took on the course of modernization and pan-Arab nationalism. Nasser wanted to build a dam at Aswan at great cost, which was essential for irrigation and power generation. The US and UK promised financial aid for constructing the mega dam in return for Egyptian alliance against the Soviet bloc in the ensuing cold war. But Nasser saw it fit to play one side against the other and extract maximum benefit to his own country. Exasperated by the prevarications of Nasser, the western powers withdrew their offer of support to the dam. Incensed at this, Nasser sought and obtained Soviet backing for the project. Moreover, he nationalized the British-owned Suez Canal Company which operated the most strategic shipping channel in the world that offered a shortcut for cargo vessels to reach the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt in 1956 but had to back down under intense American pressure. This victory caused Nasser’s reputation to soar to astronomical heights that Syria briefly joined Egypt to form the United Arab Republic. This book, written by the wife of the mercurial Egyptian leader, examines Nasser as a beloved husband, doting father and caring brother at home, away from his official avatar as the president of the country. Tahia Gamal Abdel Nasser was married to the leader for 26 years until death parted them. We find snippets of the man behind the façade of power in his true elements. Tahia strictly limited her pursuits behind the four walls of home and the affairs of her five children. This was not due to any religious inhibitions. The book is very short and the readers are treated to a ringside view of the Arab demagogue who ignited the imagination and aspirations of the Egyptian people.

Nasser kept politics out of his home and Tahia kept her influence strictly inside it. He was so caring to spare his wife of any tension that he did not divulge to her the fact that he was about to undergo appendectomy until after the surgery. A mild heart attack was also shielded from the wife until the situation stabilized. When his eldest daughter came of age, Nasser made her his personal secretary but it was in no way designed to mould her as his heir. The family stayed under the protective umbrella of the husband and Tahia was almost ignorant of what was going on around their house. Egypt was moving through a difficult phase in 1952 (military coup), 1956 (Suez crisis) and 1967 (Arab-Israeli war), but readers do not get any clue of it because these upheavals, terrible as they were, failed to create any ripple in Nasser’s personal life on account of his integrity to keep public matters insulated from the family members. No incidents are narrated where the president was seen discussing political matters even with his grown-up sons.

Nasser’s family altogether kept out of politics and harm’s way even though his sons stood a good chance to dabble in it in the footsteps of their illustrious father. After his untimely demise of a heart attack at the age of 52, his colleague Anwar al-Sadat succeeded him as the president. The family kept a distinct distance from Sadat and Tahia accuses him of maligning the memory of her husband. This dislike stoops to the level of the personal. Sadat is claimed to have been unaware of the revolution that unseated the king and was not even in Cairo. He was given a job in the new regime under the orders of Nasser. Tahia discloses that many of the articles published under Sadat’s name were ghostwritten by none other than Nasser himself. His physical appearance is also described in a pejorative way when the author unnecessarily reminds the readers about Sadat’s dark complexion on two occasions in the book. The family kept aloof from public eye during the reigns of Anwar al-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak and preserved this memoir under wraps for forty years till Mubarak was ousted from power in 2011. Tahia died in 1990 and this posthumous book was first published in Arabic. Apart from such minor recriminations against Sadat, there are no controversial subjects discussed in the narrative.

This book is only about personal reminiscences, but it still casts some interesting light on the personal life of a charismatic Arab leader who held so much potential to bring about an eventual deal with Israel in realizing lasting peace in Palestine. There are 80 pages of photographs in the book with text spanning just 116 pages. Nasser was addicted to photography and a lot of candid moments are covered in the book. Glancing over the photos, one cannot help wonder at the relaxed nature of religious rules on women’s dressing among the Egyptian middle class at that time. There are many tens of pictures in which Tahia is present, all of them in western attire and none of them in purdah. The book is graced with a foreword by Hoda, the author's eldest daughter.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star