Making A Difference

The Name Is Black

A proliferation expert isn't what Delhi wanted, but here's Robert D. Blackwill, who'd rather have been in China

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The Name Is Black
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When President George W. Bush announced Robert D. Blackwill as Washington's new man in Delhi, his office at Harvard University was quick to add the prefix Ambassador to his name on the answering machine, despite the fact that his appointment will have to be cleared by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Coming under their scrutiny during statutory confirmation hearings will be the controversial 'Colonel Programme' the professor ran at the university and his soft approach to China.

Prof Blackwill has been director of the university's Executive Programme for Senior Chinese Military Officers, that brings Chinese People's Liberation Army (pla) officers to the US. American magazine Insight reported that among the Chinese officers he trained were two colonels who participated in the Tiananmen massacre. The programme is funded by a $7 million donation from Hong Kong millionaire Nina Wang.

The magazine quoted intelligence experts as saying that Blackwill's academic programme came as a boon for Chinese military intelligence since it allowed their officers to visit Harvard as the fbi wasn't really geared for counter-intelligence operations in the Boston area.

Eight months back, at the Republican Party convention in Philadelphia, the Harvard professor was vehemently criticised by hardliners for attempting to rewrite the party's national security plank and delete references offensive to Beijing. The hardliners vetoed his line and described China as a 'strategic competitor' and not 'strategic partner' of the US.

Jesse Helms, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a hardliner himself. But searching questions on Blackwill's soft corner for Beijing would ultimately peter down to an academic discussion on how to handle China, say Congressional sources. Indeed, it's only a question of time before the career diplomat and proliferation expert takes up his assignment in New Delhi.

Blackwill, however, wasn't what New Delhi wanted. A candidate of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Blackwill was initially considered for a posting in Beijing but ended up, Congressional sources say, in the neighbourhood. Opposition from the hardliners may have forced the President to change his mind.

It's ironic that the Bush administration has appointed Blackwill as ambassador even though the post of assistant secretary in the South Asia department remains vacant. Some of the Congressmen belonging to the India Caucus—especially South Asia Committee chairman in the House of Representatives, Benjamin Gilman—are upset over the inordinate delay in finding a replacement to Karl Inderfurth. "I do not know whom to approach to persuade the administration to provide more assistance to earthquake victims of Gujarat," Gilman told an Indian-American gathering recently.

Blackwill's interest in India has been confined to viewing the subcontinent from the nuclear perspective. In his book, New Nuclear Nations, Blackwill said India's nuclear activities couldn't be separated from its political-security relationship with China, and that open nuclear deployment would heighten tension between Beijing and New Delhi. The ambassador designate also wrote that suspicion between China and India could accelerate India's nuclear programme, thereby making it difficult to stop Delhi's acquisition of nuclear weapons at the level of Pakistan, which possesses only a handful.

In an online debate on October 19, 2000, Blackwill said: "During the Clinton-Gore years, India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons.Iran proceeded vigorously with its wmd (weapons of mass destruction) programmes, assisted by Russia. Iraq began to escape the box it had been put in... George W. Bush will undo these failed wmd policies." Clearly, sending a proliferation expert to Delhi isn't a coincidence.

Also telling are Blackwill's comments on Indo-Pak relations in his latest article, An Action Agenda to Strengthen America's Alliances in Asia. He warned that the US preoccupation with India should not obscure the fact that developments in Pakistan for the next five years are likely to have a greater impact on Washington's interest than those in India. Pakistan, Blackwill said, is on the edge of fulfilling the classic definition of a failed state and its survival is in question. If its state structures were to give way, wmd proliferation and Islamic terrorism could become its most important exports. The risk of an Indo-Pak war would then rise, he noted. A fragmenting Pakistan exploited by Islamic extremists could leak N-weapon technology and fissile materials to other Muslim nations or non-state actors. Blackwill also admitted that the US viewing of India through the prism of its confrontation with Pakistan and its fixation with its nuclear programme at the expense of a broader strategic approach were a mistake.

Blackwill is supposed to be a workaholic and reportedly spends two hours daily surfing the internet. Jack Davis, who worked in the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), provides compelling insights on the man's personality in the article, A Policymaker's Perspective on Intelligence Analysis, on the cia website. Culled from interviews Blackwill gave on his days as policymaker in the Bush (sr) administration, Davis says Blackwill never even used to read DI analytic papers.

Writes he: "As Blackwill explained they were written by people who did not know what he (Blackwill) was trying to do and, so, could not help him get it done: 'When I was working at State (Department) on European Affairs, for example, on certain issues I was the Secretary of State. DI analysts did not know that—that I was one of a handful of key decision-makers on some very important matters. Why bother to read what they write for a general audience of people who have no real responsibility on the issue.'"

Blackwill was special assistant to President Bush (Sr) and senior director for European and Soviet Affairs during 1989-90, a period Davis notes as "tumultuous" and witnessing "the collapse of the Soviet Union and reshaping of Europe". Apparently, as a result of Blackwill's interviews to the cia, the agency "dramatically changed how it provides intelligence to senior policymakers".

At another point, he asks rhetorically: "One thing the Agency regularly did was send me memos on the strategic and tactical agendas of foreign officials.... Do you think that after I have spent long weeks shaping the agenda, I have to be told a day or two before the German foreign minister visits Washington why he is coming?"

Asked how he stayed informed on events overseas after leaving the Bush administration to join Harvard University again, Blackwill responded: "My main current interest is Russian politics and military affairs. I've been spending one week per month in Russia, dealing directly with the general staff."

But his interest in Russia came in for much criticism. Sarah E. Mendelson of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy cites an instance of October 28, 1994, when then Russian opposition leader V.Zhirinovksy denounced westerners working in Russia. "He had particular wrath for Harvard University and the work of Robert Blackwill," Mendelson wrote in the article, Western Assistance and the Development of Parties and Elections in Russia.

According to a 1989 update of his bio, Blackwill is married to Anne Heiberg and has three children. One thing is for sure, the new Ambassador designate will be remarkably different from the amiable incumbent Richard Celeste. For one, he can be expected to bring more activism into his ambassadorship.

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