Logic of “Greater Madness”: Gaza to Mumbai, and to Ki’linochchi

By Ravi Sundaralingam
(The views expressed are author's own)

(February 05, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian)There is the ordinary madness, nature’s strategy we the ordinary mortals subconsciously deploy for self preservation and propagation throughout our “normal” lives. The wild beings have the ‘swarm’ behaviour where the entire members come to form the functions as single brain, acting on instincts than deliberations. We, instead tend to believe that we have the ‘free will’ and as men and women consciously and voluntarily assign ourselves to a specific group for the same purpose; giving ourselves an elevation we hardly deserve most of the time. If we dare describe this as a form of madness, then it is an exclusivity based on historical or hereditary relationships, and ‘loyalties’. When ‘necessary’ it would compel us to act as a unit to be stronger and resourceful so that we can hold our “enemy to ransom”, with only the victory in our collective mind.

Then there is the greater-madness, which defies these relationships and seek to establish different conditions outside in a more deliberate and calculated manner. The dynamic principle of the strategy is to “develop and establish certain strengths and traits to hold your friends to ransom (rather than your enemy) so that you are free to act, outside the ethical or universally agreed norms”. In its trivial form we notice this ploy by our children, having stolen our hearts & minds long before they start to speak, until we cannot comply with their demands. This simple ploy when developed to higher plains as a politico-military strategy, it can be used to wreck havoc amid the ordinary madness. If ordinary madness is a reflexive response of a group or an individual to the events around, then greater madness is a deliberate strategy with a sound logic to underpin the precise aims within the strategy.

Wrath of Gazans: ordinary madness

Enter Israel, the proponent and a successful practitioner of this art. It is a country formed out of hatred; hatred of all the Europeans who were willing participants, despite their denials, in the rejection and elimination of millions of their kinds for being of Jewish faith, hatred from the anger of the Palestinians who had to be ejected from their homes and homelands to make way for the escaping ‘home coming’ Europeans. Having experienced the worst of both forms of hatred it isn’t a surprise that a ‘Jewish state’ would opt for “greater madness” as their strategy for survival.

Surrounded by hostile people, fifty times more, it cannot win every war and battle with its neighbours unless it can guarantee the permanent support of the USA. As for the Europeans, their grudging support is guaranteed as long as their guilt for the Jewish Holocaust is maintained, which is easily done through media-control and having Jewish people among the higher echelons in the respective countries. Notice how their lobbyists can easily stop an appeal for help for the ratchete Gazans on the Brisish TV. But, the Americans, the reluctant supporters for a Jewish state in Palestine at the beginning, have to be roped in beyond their natural need for reliable allies in the region.

It is therefore reasonable to argue, whatever the original motives were for Israeli nuclear arsenal, it is now part of a strategy as a weight on the US shoulders as much as a threat against its neighbours. As the only nation to refuse to renounce the ‘first use’, having never admitted to its nuclear arsenal, Israel has obviously built up a ‘world threatening’ strength in terms of strategic-power. These decisions alone suggest, unlike the ordinary madness of the ordinary states that use nuclear armoury as a deterrent, Israel wants to use it for ulterior but subtle motives.

That is only the first part, and the second part is to convince your ‘friends’ more than your enemies that you are mean and mad, mean what you don’t say, and therefore capable of using them as ordinary weapons. For that it also has to build up and demonstrate a psychological trait that can be associated with greater-madness.

Israelis achieve this without much trouble. As a first step they constantly stoke the fires to engineer a process of radicalisation around them, which keeps everyone including its friends on their toes. It is very helpful to be certain that the radicalised opponents would come at them obligingly, only to be knocked back in any of the socio-political or socio-military progress they have made and perhaps, can give a ‘good-beating’ each time to subdue them psychologically. Their guaranteed attacks and acrimony will keep the entire map on view, and can also be used to demonstrate their instability and unsuitability as long term strategic partners for USA, if it ever thought of a swap. Therefore, every opportunity offered or created is used to destroy any emerging socio-military or socio-economic structures in the neighbourhood, which deny its ‘friends’ any other option; part of the strategy of greater madness.

The Palestinians are now left completely on their own devices and their so called embryo of a state is being dismembered by the Israelis, and slowly being bled into disrepute. As a people they have no real strategy other than that equipped by ordinary madness; the radicalisation and constant confrontations with the Israelis, and the internecine battles and wars to maintain a radical leadership, everything what the Israelis want. As for the Gazans, they are well and truly stone-walled in to a tomb, not only by the high rising Israeli concrete fence within which their massacre is ritually conducted but, also by the silence of their Arab brothers and the moral guardians in the West, and the stone-deafness of their ever radical leaderships to their scream for physical survival.

The much heralded anticipation for changes with the election of Obama started to be strangled voices once his team began to take shape, but the Israelis are not going to take chances. The attack deep inside Gaza, purportedly in a search and destroy mission against incoming rockets may not have ‘achieved’ its objective. However, it certainly set the Foreign policy agenda for the new presidency, and one can see its effect even before Obama took office, as his team were scurrying across to South Asia to put a damp cloth on the brewing crisis between the nuclear neighbours.

Israelis are successful with their strategy because in its triangular relationship, it has an 'inferior' people, whose land it colonised and continue to steal and, their lives neither the West nor their own kind consider worth anything, on one side, and the only superpower on the other side. Furthermore, they were willing to play every part in full within to convince the working of the strategy without fear.

Can this strategy of greater-madness can used anywhere else?

South Asia in particular

Whether the strategists in South Asia stumbled into this idea by accident or lateral thinking we can see its semblance. The Pakistanis seem to have the grasp of it to keep the US attention on their side. If US was ever thinking of abandoning the Pakistanis after all their services, then Pakistanis are willing to opt for greater madness; some times by attacking India using 'terrorism', which the American crusade is purportedly against. Just as the nuclear arsenal is being used by the Israelis, while the US is campaigning for against ‘nuclear proliferation’, Pakistanis are willing to use ‘terrorism’ to keep the US on their case.

Despite the Indian propaganda success after the Mumbai attack it is reasonable to suggest the Pakistanis have also achieved success of some sort with their so called (greater) madness, by retrieving the interest of US, which they were allegedly about to lose. By demonstrating an apparent instability of the state and the state of minds of those who run it, Pakistanis have effectively used the Israeli strategy to their advantage.

If President elect Obama had questioned the nature of the Pakistani state with regard to the fight against Islamic-terrorism in a negative manner, then the terrorist attack on Mumbai has brought his team's focus on Pakistan to a more positive or rather realistic perspective. Some even dare to ask the question "who needs who more?" even though Pakistan is almost bankrupt and a failed state.

But, can US actually win a war in Afghanistan without the support of the Pakistani state, disengage from Iraq and perhaps, even get engaged with Iran? As engaging the US with Iran can be attributed more to the Israeli strategy than that originates from Washington, how much freedom does the new president have?

Then, Obama has also made comments about solving the 'Kashmiri problem'. Is it any wonder Obama's deputy Mr.Biden has been to the region to tell India that “the enemies of India and Pakistan are not each other but, the 'terrorists' or in our new terminology, the non-state actors”. But, according to India the non-state actors are none other than part of the state’s establishments; the Pakistani army and its intelligence services. If so, how would the US square this circle? Obviously Indian strategists knew all this and we are sure they have their own reasons to persist with their claims within a well thought out strategy.

Can India be able to follow a similar strategy in the region? Certainly, if it wants to be in a triangular relationship, where its object of desire is the US. However, the aspirations and objectives of India and Israel are not the same; India has regional responsibilities, while Israel only has its selfish motives for survival and expansion into Palestinian territory. Where as India seeks stability and development for its region Israel wants chaos and disinvestment in its neighbourhood.

Therefore, even against the Pakistanis India could not afford or accord a strategy such as that Israelis deploy.

But, can they employ this strategy in part on its Southern front?

India-Sri Lanka-the Tamils: what madness?

The civil war in the island could not have reached the level if it weren’t for the intervention of India.

Indian interventions before the civil war has always been to placate the Sinhala establishment. Signing away accords to repatriate Plantation Tamils to Tamil Nadu is one example, without any consultation with TN leaders. This depletion of the Tamil population inadvertently paved the way for reinforcing the arguments by the Sinhala chauvinists, and thereby undermined the concept of citizenship of the island, particularly for the Tamils. It carried on regardless with this attitude to buy off the Sinhala leaderships by handing over Kachchaithevu, hoping to safeguard its ‘strategic interests’.

These weren’t part of a plan or a strategy, but crude and ad hoc behaviour based on personal friendships with abysmal attitude towards the rights and belonging of others; comparing it to human-sacrifice of someone else baby to gratify some stupid god would not be far off the mark. As with the stupid god these are never enough and, as they weren’t part of a credible strategy never persuasive enough to underline India’s expectations with the Sinhala establishment.

If not, in its 2nd phase of intervention why would Delhi arm the Tamil militants or ‘invade’ the island with MIGs load of cooking-oil and rice to bring some sense to JR Jeyawardena, who was behaving as though Sri Lanka was part of the NATO, then in a bi-polar world?

Without doubt its support for the Tamil militants helped them launch ‘terrorist’ attacks in Sinhala areas. It condoned LTTE's elimination of all other groups by its promotion of the LTTE as the sole representatives in all the talks from Bangalore on until the formation of the North-East Provincial Council, undermining the basic principles of democracy. Pluralism and democracy the new words some writers have discovered recently were put to rest by these non-existent strategy.

Unless Delhi was hoping it would be easier to deal and achieve its objectives with a non-political military outfit, with the ferocity to match its name. It was careful however, to involve the then TN leader MGR in a process what it thought was the conclusion of that phase, with the signing of yet another accord on Tamils behalf in 1987.

Now Delhi has come full circle and support the destruction of the LTTE, again we have to believe, as part of a grand and cunning scheme to bring peace to the island; once again at the expense of the Tamil speaking communities.

These historical observations and conditions Delhi places upon the Tamil communities in Sri Lanka simply negate the importance of the Tamil communities in the island as part of Delhi’s strategic interests, except to be used as catalysts when required. Since they are not so important, only the negatives of the LTTE and the security concern they bring to region become the interests and therefore, LTTE has become the main focus. Having allowed all other Tamil groups, militants and moderates to be eliminated, Delhi can now kill of its creation to leave the Tamils at the mercy of the Sinhala establishment.

If Delhi wanted to deny the LTTE a final say in the outcome of the civil war, then shutting out the Tamil Nadu ensures that the entire Tamil side, as a whole, didn’t have a decisive say on the matter. Delhi knows the strengths and weaknesses of the Tamil Expatriate communities, because of their support for the LTTE thus, it would be easier to shut them.

This consistent pattern in its dealings with the Tamil issues suggests that Delhi doesn’t entertain a triangular relationship with Sinhala establishment and the Tamils. Delhi therefore, gets ‘constructively’ engaged with the Sinhala establishment again by trying to placate its desire to overwhelm its ‘only traditional enemy’, the Tamils. This time Delhi is giving the impression that it has certain solution in mind; thirteen plus with thirty nine steps.

Therefore, the dynamic principles of ‘greater-madness’ aren’t there for Delhi to reach for it as a strategy.

In Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapackshe is winning battles after battles against the LTTE, the sole representative of the Tamil resistance. The LTTE too employed similar strategy, a form of 'greater madness' by eliminating all other options for ‘India or anyone else’. Every single political group, whether they posed a political or military threat, was wiped out, and LTTE alone was left as the only option; which they presented as the sole-representation. Obviously their object of desire certainly wasn't the Tamil communities or like the Israelis had any power specific in their plan. There wasn’t a triangular relationship to talk about as the LTTE left open that space for anyone to fit its bill. This weakness within its strategy, not choosing anyone as a strategic-partner, invalidates its plan, even to be considered to be in the category of greater-madness. Its atrocities and the victories against other groups were mere primitive desire of a group for domination, beating the competitors before defeating the enemy; a trait of ordinary madness. This became obvious as it later joined forces with its 'historical' enemy, the Sinhala state, to eject the Indians out of the island in a war against the IPKF, which lead to the tragedy for the entire Tamil communities in Sri Lanka and India; the murder of Rajive Gandhi.

If, that is a very big if, LTTE had chosen India as its object of desire would that have made any difference to Delhi’s ultimate objectives? Instead of fighting the IPKF if it had cooperated and accepted to run the North-East Provincial Council would there been an opportunity even if Delhi had other plans to turn the eventualities in its favour? By fighting the IPKF, LTTE has revived the bad taste the Indian strategists had with the creation of Bangladesh; who killed Mujib and which group is truly anti-Indian are unnecessary debate as they wouldn’t want yet another hostile space on its Southern front. Well answers for these or arguments are just academic now, but have a real meaning for the time to come. However, it is true if anyone of the three were to have test this theory out, it was the LTTE that missed the best opportunity.

Yet, we know for many reasons beyond these arguments and implications we would not expect the LTTE to deploy or be successful with such a strategy. Sri Lanka is not Middle East in any form of imagination, and it is not part of an economy as that of Israel within US. Neither Sri Lanka nor the LTTE can be compared to the Israelis as they are conducting a war within a unitary state in contrast to that with the Palestinians.

As for the Sri Lankan state these ideas of ‘greater madness’ are far fetched as its acceptance to be part of an Indian influenced region. It exhibits all the knowledge of a failed state, which it is, in its victories and defeats against a failing organisation. Its expectation and objectives are as limited as their leaders ability to convince those who are opposed to them; eliminating or silencing them like the Editor of the Sunday Leader News paper.

Only those with exceptional ability, intellectual acumen and wisdom can decipher the difference, as thin as a cigarette-rolling paper, between Mahinda’s Sinhala state and the LTTE in terms of their understanding of the region, democracy, responsibility and value for simple, very basic human rights. Only the merchants of garbage can compare on with another and see the virtue of one of them. Then again, just as anytime in the history of human suffering and fight for survival, there is plenty of money to be made in the garbage business. A coherent strategy? For big-men,what madness?

(Ravi Sundaralingam is the Academic Secretary of ASATiC and can be reached at Academic_secretary@gmail.com)-Sri Lanka Guardian