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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: GSLV

A War in Space

01 Mon Jun 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Security, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on A War in Space

Tags

A2/AD, Agni, ANGELS, anti-access/area denial, anti-satellite, ASAT, Automated Navigation and Guidance Experiment for Local Space, C5ISR, Cartosat, CCI-Sat, China, Communication-Centric Intelligence Satellite, Corona, Dong Fen 21, Dong Neng 2, Earth Observation Technology Experiment Satellite, electromagnetic pulse, EMP, EOTES, Fengyun, geosynchronous orbit, Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, Global Positioning System, GPS, GSAT, GSLV, GSO, India, Indian Regional Navigational Satellite, Indian Space Research Organisation, IRNSS, ISRO, Istrebitel Sputnikov, Joint Vision 2020, laser, LEO, Low Earth Orbit, microwave, Pakistan, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, Prowler, PSLV, radar imaging, RISAT, satellite, SC-19, Soviet Union, space, United States, United States Space Command

A few hundred kilometres above the earth, an orbiting object receives a signal from a ground transmitting station; gently, the satellite powers up its systems and conducts a series of short thrusts that put it on course to its target. Drifting into the proximity, at almost five km per second, it emits a short yet powerful electromagnetic pulse. Far below, the Indian Navy cannot seem to get through to its nuclear submarines, the bearers of its vital nuclear second-strike capability. This may sound like a scenario from a John McTiernan blockbuster but it is very much within the realm of the possible. For years now, China has been developing its capabilities to wage war in space and of late, its string of successes merit series concern from India and its neighbours.

The militarisation of space started decades ago. Beginning in June 1959, the United States began to launch the Corona series of reconnaissance satellites that were tasked with gathering information on the Soviet military, their economy, electronic intelligence, and even early detection of missile launches. A total of 144 satellites were put into low earth orbit (LEO) until May 1972. The United States had halting success with anti-satellite (ASAT) weaponry but efforts were discontinued by the US Congress as the Cold War was winding down. However, in February 2008, the United States used a Standard Missile 3, designed primarily as an anti-ballistic missile, to destroy one of its military reconnaissance satellites.

On the other side of the Cold War, the Soviet Union developed and deployed an anti-satellite weapons system as early as November 1963, the Istrebitel Sputnikov (IS). The weapon was a single-launch kamikaze satellite carrying a 300 kg fragmenting warhead that would be put into LEO by a launch vehicle and then manoeuvre itself towards its target. The radius of the shrapnel from the warhead was no more than two kilometres and the satellite itself carried only enough fuel for 300 seconds of operation. The Soviet Union had little success with anti-satellite missiles but experimented with military space stations, lasers, and other means of intercepting, jamming, and destroying enemy satellites in case of war. The Soviet Union’s successor state, Russia, has recently restarted this project after a lull since the end of the Cold War and secretly launched a satellite in December 2013 that is capable of approaching other satellites, studying them, and intercepting, jamming, or destroying them if necessary. This is similar to the US Prowler satellite launched in 1990 or the ANGELS (Automated Navigation and Guidance Experiment for Local Space) programme announced in 2014.

SatellitesChina’s first forays into space had begun in 1956 with a programme whose primary task was to detect and counter American and later Soviet ballistic missile threats. Its formative years were spent developing a credible nuclear deterrent and received much assistance from Moscow until the Sino-Soviet split ended all cooperation in mid-1960. A presence in space was envisioned only in July 1967 and China’s first successful satellite was launched in April 1970. However, space evinced little interest from a China that was still recovering from the Cultural Revolution and new projects were taken up sparingly. Improving on previously tried and tested systems, China was able to offer a commercial launch facility in 1985 that would put several European and Asian satellites into orbit. Interest in space was on the rise again in Beijing in the late 1980s and a full-fledged ministry for aerospace was established in 1988. The first Gulf War two years later served as a Sputnik moment for Beijing and the state-owned aviation industry concern was made responsible for extraterrestrial endeavours as well. The number of annual Chinese space launches currently exceeds that of the United States and it is believed that China presently operates some 132 satellites in space, second to only the United States.

China shocked observers by bringing down one of their Fengyun class meteorological satellites with an ASAT variant of their Dong Feng 21 missile in January 2007. A further test was carried out in January 2010 with the same missile, the SC-19. Beijing conducted two more tests, one in May 2013 and another in July 2014, under the guise of a scientific mission. In these, a new type of missile was tested, the Dong Neng 2. China has already tested placing a parasitic microsatellite in orbit in 2008 when a BX-1 passed within 25 kms of the International Space Station – a collision could have been catastrophic.

These developments might not have been particularly worrying during the Cold War as few countries had come to depend heavily on satellites. However, the extent of integration of space-based assets in prosecuting Operation Desert Storm in January 1990 marked a new era in war-fighting. The use of global positioning to locate troops, reconnaissance satellites for image data of terrain and enemy troops, communications satellites to connect various services and theatres of battle, and Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites to detect early the launch of Scud missiles made the conflict the first space war; by Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001, satellites had become even more integral to the military – now, they guided smart bombs onto their targets, provided video links to headquarters, and were the interface between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and their operators. In 2015, the ability to cripple or even deny an opponent the use of space assets is a severe threat that can very well decide the fate of an engagement.

Beijing has observed these developments closely and has come to the conclusion that “whoever controls space [the universe] can control the earth,” a quotation the Chinese military attributes to US president John F Kennedy. In fact, much of Chinese thinking on space warfare is directly influenced by the United States. Chinese security journals regularly cite US literature on strategy, tactics, and technology development in space and some of their more influential thinkers even borrow Western terminology. Presently, there is an unstated acceptance in the Chinese Politburo and the PLA of the United States’ unassailable technological and material superiority in space. As a result, China has opted for an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy that would eliminate or hinder US C5ISR capabilities (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Combat Systems, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) against China in case of conflict. China would conduct nodal warfare, breaking the United States’ information chain at critical moments to undermine support given to conventional forces and weaken their dominance.

Chinese military ambitions are focused on achieving tactical parity with the United States. To this end, the country’s primary focus in counter-satellite warfare has been on space object surveillance and identification, direct ascent and co-orbital ASAT programmes, laser and microwave weapons systems, electronic warfare, and cyber weapons. The PLA’s understanding of US military doctrine, based on US actions as well as policy documents such as the United States Space Command’s Vision for 2020 and Joint Vision 2020, is that a space war is inevitable; through the command of space, the United States has the ability to perform surgical strikes and obviate the necessity for the greater use of force. This ability may be enough of a deterrent to an opponent to submit without fighting. Yet the cost of deploying space assets and their limited scale means that these forces cannot be employed at will. Even rich nations like the United States will be strained to maintain even a thin layer of space-based assets. Instead of challenging the United States in toto, Beijing will seek to gain footholds in a few, well-chosen areas that have decisive implications for security and operations. Thus, full engagement is avoided because, as one Chinese analyst wrote, “to break one finger is more effective than hurting all fingers.”

Satellite centric warfareAccording to Chinese military strategists, in contrast to the past, modern wars have become increasingly short and are often decided by just one intense campaign. Thus, winning the campaign may well mean winning the war. There might not be time, or China may lack the capability, to destroy all the enemy’s strategic assets as it might have had to in previous wars. In fact, there is no need to do so anymore if offensive focus can be spearheaded, even temporarily, against vital targets that integrate and support the enemy’s overall operations system. In other words, the PLA will strive to paralyse its opponent first and then conduct an operation of annihilation later to encourage a rapid political conclusion to hostilities. The appeal of this strategy against a technologically and operationally superior foe is obvious; as a Xinhua article recently stated, “For countries that can never win a war with the United States by using the method of tanks and planes, attacking the US space system may be an irresistible and most tempting choice.” Once most of the technological force multipliers are eliminated, China will have the upper hand in terms of sheer numbers.

This is unfortunate for India, who has to contend with a hostile power on its border that is constantly expanding its military capabilities. China’s undeclared Cold War with the United States pulls it into an unacknowledged arms race whose ripple effects its neighbours have to bear. India will also have to contend with the possibility that China will share at least some of its space assets with Pakistan. Beijing may easily provide Rawalpindi with intelligence on Indian troop movements, deployment, and signals intercepts in addition to what Pakistan might have managed on its own. The use of Chinese A2/AD against India on its western border will degrade Delhi’s conventional superiority against Islamabad and bleed the Indian treasury more to mitigate the situation. Such a scenario is highly plausible given the reckless sharing of nuclear and missile technology by Beijing with Islamabad in the past.

The good news is that destroying space assets is not a particularly difficult task – satellites are relatively easy to detect and since their orbits are clearly defined, much easier to shoot down than ballistic missiles. Indian defence planners will also be glad that their efforts in the new domain of space need not start from the ground up – India has already developed several technologies on its own for other weapons systems that may be modified and applied to defence purposes. Much like in the nuclear field, the difference between a space asset for civilian use and for military purposes is marginal and apparent only towards the end of the production cycle.

India’s Agni III and Agni V missiles, for example, amply indicate the potential to engage targets at high altitudes. The recent space missions to the Moon and to Mars also demonstrate a fair ability to track objects through space and to communicate with them. India’s family of satellites is not unimpressive and it has already launched several dual-use civilian and military satellites. India’s first remote-sensing satellite was launched in 1988, the IRS-1A, with a resolution of 36 metres; the IRS-1C, seven years later, achieved a resolution of under six metres. In 2001, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the first satellite that had clear military applications as well: the Earth Observation Technology Experiment Satellite, with a resolution of one metre and weighing slightly over 1,100 kgs, was put in orbit from Sriharikota by the workhorse of the Indian space programme, a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. In 2008, Cartosat-2A was launched with even better resolution than the EOTES, and Cartosat-2B was put in orbit in 2010. The same year, ISRO also sent up the Oceansat-2, purposed for weather tracking and identification of fishing zones. However, it is also available to the Indian Navy for bathymetry and anti-submarine warfare. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Bombay, India acquired a radar-imaging satellite, the RISAT-2 from Israel. It was India’s first such platform and was equipped with the X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar, allowing it to monitor its assigned area regardless of time of day or weather. ISRO had planned to launch Cartosat-3 by the end of 2014 but it has now been pushed back to September 2017; the satellite will have a resolution of 25 centimetres and provide the highest resolution earth photographs of any commercial satellite.

None of these are exclusively military satellites, of which India has very few. Even the constellation of seven Indian Regional Navigational Satellite (IRNSS) GPS satellites is meant to be available to civilians as well as the military. Part of the reason is the expense of becoming a space-faring nation. ISRO subsidises the development of its space infrastructure by selling services – launches, imagery, applications – commercially. Data from Indian satellites is routinely used around the world and benefit many causes. According to one estimate from 2004, India’s IRS satellites have earned more than four times the amount which has been invested on them through commerce as well as their contributions to urban planning, disaster management, and water resources management. However, this sort of jugaad economics cannot continue for much longer. “In space we have to be at par,” explains former ISRO chairman UR Rao. “We cannot say that we would make products which cost less but can get part of the job done. You just cannot bargain with space and have to have the best technology.” The GSAT-7 was India’s first exclusively military satellite, meant for communication with and between Indian naval vessels, was launched only in August 2013; another dedicated military satellite for electronic intelligence, the Communication-Centric Intelligence Satellite (CCI-Sat), is scheduled for 2020.

Not all satellites are the same. Other than shielding and the limited ability to manoeuvre in space, satellites are also defined by the orbits they trace. Satellites in LEO are easier to target than those further away in Medium Earth, High Earth, or Geosynchronous Orbits. GSO satellites are, as the name suggests, stationed above a particular point on earth at an altitude of 36,000 kms. Their coverage of the earth’s surface is greater but they are less flexible in their orbits or manoeuvrability. This trajectory is usually reserved for communications satellites as their fixed location obviates the need for expensive and bulky tracking equipment on the ground. At the other end are LEO satellites. These cover far less of the earth’s surface at a time but are faster, more manoeuvrable, and have greater proximity to the earth, all of which makes them ideal for imaging missions. The lower orbit also means that a greater number of such satellites are required to cover the same area constantly as a satellite in higher orbit. LEO satellites are more vulnerable to ASAT missiles than are GSO satellites but they are also usually cheaper and less valuable strategically than the latter. A country spreads its space assets in a multitude of orbits depending on mission profile, budget, and strategy.

One important step India can take is to give its disparate space efforts some focus. A dedicated Aerospace Command, to serve more as a nodal agency between the services than an independent wing of the Indian military, will be better able to judge and accommodate the needs of the services without unnecessary and expensive replication of capabilities. Furthermore, it would be a politically wise decision to separate ISRO from military missions; the organisation only recently was removed from under US sanctions and its involvement in Indian space warfare missions would only make it a target again. The dual use of space technologies a well established fact, it serves India’s needs to have one of its space centres beyond international reproach.

India also needs to significantly upgrade its space infrastructure. The country has just one space launch facility at Sriharikota that struggles to handle much more than six to eight launches per year when several more are required if the deficiencies in space are to be overcome in a timely manner. Additionally, ISRO has been struggling with the development of an indigenous cryogenic engine and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) for years. The PSLV has managed to handle the workload, especially with additional boosters strapped on, but India needs a reliable rocket that can put payloads in excess of even 15 or 18 tonnes into LEO.

Beyond infrastructure, India needs to consider what countermeasures it can provide its satellites. Even though satellites are easy targets, the more advanced varieties can withstand some amount of interference with its sensors and communications. Shielding is perhaps the simplest countermeasure, but this makes satellites heavier. Another method is to build in some amount of manoeuvrability so that it can escape from a predatory co-orbital anti-satellite device. This will require fuel to be carried and stored onboard which will also make the satellite heavier and will eventually run out. Yet another option is to build in redundancy – if a certain mission requires a constellation of nine satellites, a dozen might be tasked; the additional three satellites, together with the ability to launch replacements quickly if needed, might perhaps be a cheaper option than a handful of very expensive and very valuable satellites.

The military must also consider what kind of anti-satellite measures it wishes to develop to disrupt the enemy’s C5ISR. Given the work done in developing India’s ballistic missile defence and intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, a kinetic kill vehicle – industry parlance for an ASAT missile – might seem the easiest option. However, the Chinese test in 2007 created over 2,500 fragments in space that now interfere with the satellites of all nations. In fact, one of these fragments crashed into a Russian satellite in May 2013 and destroyed it. Cleaner kills would be through the development of microwave, EMP, or laser weapons systems. Depending upon their nature, intensity, and exposure, the effects could be temporary or permanent, giving India far more flexibility in its response to incidents.

There is little reason to panic just yet but space warfare is something that deserves more scholarly attention in India. A fair portion of India’s space budget goes unused each year despite the need for aggressive expansion of infrastructure, facilities, and manpower. Though it is difficult to compare space budgets internationally due to the dual use nature of the technology, India needs to invest significantly more into the industry. Luckily for India, this is not a guns vs. butter argument because the potential for overlap between civilian and military needs is enormous. While the initial elements of robust space defence exists in India, strategic vision is needed to shape it into a potent programme. As the Good Book tells us, where there is no vision, the people perish (Míshlê 29:18).


This article first appeared in the June 2015 print edition of Swarajya.

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2013, From Mali to Bali: The Year in Review

26 Thu Dec 2013

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Opinion and Response

≈ Comments Off on 2013, From Mali to Bali: The Year in Review

Tags

2013, al-Shabaab, Arms Trade Treaty, ATT, Bali, Booz Allen Hamilton, chemical weapons, Chemical Weapons Convention, Christianity, Edward Snowden, Ghouta, GSLV, Hugo Chávez, Ieng Sary, India, Iran, ISRO, Kenneth Waltz, Kenya, Mali, Mangalyaan, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Mohamed Morsi, National Security Agency, Nelson Mandela, North Korea, NSA, nuclear, Operation Surya Hope, Peter O'Toole, Pope Benedict XVI, PSLV, Syria, terrorism, Uttarakhand, Westgate Mall, World Trade Organisation, WTO

So another year is ending – Nostradamus and the Mayans were clearly horrible at this foretelling business, and our exile on this rock continues. The Syrian civil war continues unabated though the government forces of Bashar al-Assad seem to have gained the advantage, the European Union expanded by one more member – Croatia – despite its Eurocrisis, and Fidel Castro still lives to poke the United States in the eye. However, what were the defining moments of 2013? In the long term, it is hard to tell yet – as Groucho Marx said, outside of a dog, a book is Man’s best friend; inside of a dog, it is too dark to read. In the here and now, though, a few events stand out:

January 11 – France intervenes in Mali: Africa has been largely ignored since the end of colonialism there in the 1960s. Cold War struggles in Angola, Rhodesia, the Congo, Mozambique, Ethiopia, or Somalia rarely captured the attention of the world as Korea, Vietnam, or even South Asia did. After decades of neglect, Western powers are now following Islamists into the interiors of the continent; France’s intervention in Mali, soon after action in Libya and in context of its more vocal stance on Syria and the Congo, marks the Fifth Republic’s renewed interest in a global security commons, interestingly under a Socialist president. In the previous decade, France had notoriously blocked United Nations action in Iraq.

February 12 – N Korea’s third nuclear test: Any nuclear test is significant because it furthers a state’s knowledge of one of the most destructive weapons known. This test by Pyongyang is thought to have contributed to understanding warhead miniaturisation and greater fission of the core. If N Korea achieves this, together with its missiles (No Dong, Taepo Dong, Musudan, Unha), it becomes another de facto Nuclear Weapons State.

February 28 – Benedict XVI resigns as Pope: This is the first time since Gregory XII in 1415 that a pope has stood down, and the first to do so voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294. Benedict XVI may not have radically altered the course of history but by showing the ability to give up power, he has probably done more to remind the Church of its founding tenets than most popes in between.

April 2 – Arms Trade Treaty is signed: This treaty is dead on arrival, but it will nevertheless serve as another legal scalpel for powers when convenient, much like the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The aim of the treaty is to control and regulate the sale of conventional weapons, from small arms to battle tanks, prevent their diversion to clandestine buyers, and to restrict their flow into conflict areas. Past records show that such goals are a mirage – when the United States cut off arms sales to Pakistan during the South Asian Crisis of 1971, it encouraged Turkey, Jordan, and Iran to supply Islamabad from their arsenal which would be replenished and upgraded later; when the US Congress forbade the supply of arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, the Reagan White House found a way to divert money to the cause from secret arms sales to Iran.

May 28 – Taksim Gezi Park protests in Istanbul: A minor sit-in grew into a protest which became a nationwide conflagration against Turkey’s ruling Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s slow erosion of country’s Kemalist secularism. The protest, seen in isolation, means little but considering it alongside the corruption probes against several ministers in Erdoğan’s cabinet and the now open war between the AKP and the Gülen movement, the AKP will have a bust time up to the 2015 elections. Most experts give the win to Erdoğan again, but a large part of that is due to the failure of the opposition to come up with a viable candidate and platform yet. One thing is for sure – Turkey is on the simmer. and a place to watch in the new year

June 6 – Edward Snowden reveals covert surveillance by NSA: A Booz Allen Hamilton employee’s revelations about the US National Security Agency’s espionage set off a firestorm around the world. Despite being long past the era in which gentlemen did not read other gentlemen’s letters, the sheer scope of the operation is stunning. Not only did the NSA spy on other enemy governments as intelligence agencies usually do, but they also spied on friendly and allied governments, political leaders, businesses, activists, and actively worked to sabotage privacy and encryption algorithms on the internet. The public heard for the first time names of programmes like PRISM, XKeyscore, and Tempora which were designed to take metadata from phones and internet traffic in a massive attempt at mass surveillance. Whatever one’s views of Snowden are – hero, whistle-blower or traitor – the presence of US surveillance agencies in a country’s most secret networks is a great significance and this leak dwarfs Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers in potential consequences.

June 14 – Flash floods in Uttarakhand: A multi-day cloud burst over northern India caused India’s worst natural disaster since the Southeast Asian tsunami hit in 2004. Over 100,000 Hindu pilgrims were stranded in Uttarakhand, the site of the smaller Char Dham. The Indian military rescued tens of thousands of people in Operation Surya Hope but despite their valiant efforts, official records indicate that over 10,000 people perished in the tragedy. For a brief moment, there was some focus on questionable construction practices and dubious licenses issued for development in the region; the death toll made people pay attention to the environmental impact of ill-conceived development, but in keeping with India’s indefatigable inertia, everyone has adjusted swalpa and moved on.

July 3 – Mohamed Morsi removed from power in Egypt: After tempting fate one time too many, the Egyptian military removed the country’s fifth president from power. Morsi is the leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, and came to office via an election some claim was far from honest. The Arab Spring had come to Egypt and toppled Hosni Mubarak who had ruled the country since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. During the election campaign, Morsi had sounded like a moderate traditionalist. Once he assumed office, however, his manipulation of the judiciary and the Islamist accent of the new constitution worried many Egyptians. The Army thus enjoyed widespread support when they acted against Morsi, and while the West debated semantics – whether it was a coup or not – the bloodshed continued in Egypt, turning their Spring into a Winter of Discontent.

August 21 – Ghouta chemical attack in Syria: The use of chemical weapons in war is not as rare as one would like: most recently, they were by Saddam Hussein against Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War; some accuse the United States of waging chemical warfare with its use of Agent Orange in Vietnam though there are some technical quibbles. Chemical weapons have been used on civilians too, most notably in Halabja against the Kurds by, again, Saddam Hussein. So why was Ghouta different? Honestly, it is hard to say, except for that it provided an excuse for the West to intervene in Syria if it wanted to. However, the difficulty of a military adventure in Syria appears to have stayed the West’s hand, as did Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s offer to surrender his entire stockpile of chemical weapons and sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. This reduces the ranks of non-signatories to just four – Angola, Egypt, N Korea, and S Sudan.

September 21 – Al-Shabaab attack Westgate Mall in Nairobi: Four or five gunmen from the terrorist group al-Shabaab killed 72 people and wounded over 200 over a span of three days in the upscale shopping mall of Westgate in the Westlands neighbourhood of Nairobi. The brutality of the attack – how many of the hostages were tortured – shocked the world. This is perhaps the worst terrorist attack on Kenyan soil and one of the larger attacks in the world since the attack on Bombay in November 2008. The terror group claimed that the attack was revenge for Kenya’s role in Operation Linda Nchi (2011) in which the Kenyan military coordinated with its Ethiopian and Somalian counterparts and deployed into southern Somalia in pursuit of al-Shabaab terrorists. After the tragedy, President Uhuru Kenyatta admitted that the rescue attempt had been bungled and promised to set up an inquiry.

November 5 – Indian launches Mars orbiter: One of the few bright events of the year, apart from Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement from cricket (#trollbait!), was India’s launch of its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM). Dubbed Mangalyaan by the media, the project is a first for India and the country becomes only the fifth country to send a mission to the Red Planet after the United States, Russia/Soviet Union, Japan, and the European Union. Of course, one can question if Russia deserves to be in this list given the curse its Mars programme seems to be under – 18 failures and three partial successes. India’s mission may not push on the boundaries of knowledge in any great way, but it represents the development of indigenous technology and skills needed for such a mission. The recent failure of India’s most powerful rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) meant that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had to settle for the smaller Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and hence a lighter payload. The probe is expected to reach Mars by late September next year, almost exactly when the United States’ Maven mission reaches the Red Planet. Despite these disappointments, Mangalyaan is a proud milestone in the history of India’s spacefaring.

November 24 – Interim Nuclear Agreement concluded with Iran: The deal represents nothing but a declaration of good faith to conduct negotiations, and establishes conditions for both the E3+3 (France, Germany, Britain + Russia, United States, China) and Iran that they may assuage the other side’s concerns. What is most important about this deal is that it has finally broken the jinx on Iran’s discussions with the West and achieved an agreement. Iran has been accused of being a year away from nuclear weapons capability since the early 1980s (!) and sanctions became tougher over the last eight years. In the last coupe of years, the threat of war loomed large as Iran inched closer to the West’s red line on Tehran’s nuclear development. Psychologically, this deal has readied many leaders to the idea that Iran is a country that can be negotiated with and has silenced the war drums for now. News of this potential breakthrough has already seen several businesses prepare to flood Iran’s market with their services the moment a final agreement is reached on the Middle Eastern state’s nuclear question.

December 7 – Bali Package signed at 9th WTO meet: The World Trade Organisation finally signed a trillion-dollar agreement in Bali at the Ninth Ministerial Conference. The deal has been widely hailed as an engine for growth, particularly for developing countries. It was agreed to simplify customs procedures so that goods could move quickly from state to state, and India finagled an exemption on the WTO’s limits on stockpiling, subsidies, and guaranteed pricing to farmers; in effect, the United Progressive Alliance’s new and ambitious food subsidy remains safe. The agreement is also expected to create some 20 million new jobs, most of which will be in developing countries. There are still wrinkles to be worked out, but those goals, such as duty-free trade, have been declared as eventual goals and put off for a later date. By stepping away from an all-or-nothing approach, the WTO was able to secure an arrangement beneficial to all at a pace acceptable to all.

Requiescat In Pace…

  • March 05 – Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela (59)
  • March 14 – Ieng Sary, Deputy Prime Minister of Cambodia (88)
  • April 08 – Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (88)
  • May 12 – Kenneth Waltz, Professor of Political Science (89)
  • December 05 – Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa (95)
  • December 14 – Peter O’Toole, Actor (81)
  • December 23 – Mikhail Kalashnikov, Arms designer (94)

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on December 28, 2013.

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Considerate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.

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