Brouhaha on the AIG Bonus

The whole world is abuzz with the bonus given to a certain group of executives of the American International Group (AIG), the colossal insurance giant. People are aghast at the enormity of the event. When the country is passing through recession, it is unconscionable for anybody to accept huge sum of money by way of bonus, and it was stupid on the part of the management of the AIG not to be able to find a way to avoid such an embarrassing situation. It is all the more so, because the recipients of the bonus were the very same people who are said to have dealt in the derivatives trading which brought financial ruin on the company. Simplistically, they were rewarded for their incompetence. At least this is the view, which is popular in the media and public. Fuming with rage, the attorney-general of the New York, Mr Cuomo declared that he would “name and shame” the recipients of the bonus. Not to be left behind, his counterpart in Connecticut said, “……these people should have been shoved out the door, not showered with cash." In a fit of righteous anger, a senior Senator went to the extent of advising them to “resign or go, commit suicide.” In private conversations, people used much stronger language.

Yet, there is another side of the story. The bonus given to AIG executives was not a performance bonus. It was retention bonus and its value was not linked to the performance level of the individual recipients. It was a part of their total compensation package, and the company was obliged to pay it under a contract with them, regardless of how the company fared. Unlike the performance bonus, the retention bonus is not designed to be a percentage of the profit which they would be expected to add to their company. This modus of bonus is prevalent in many big corporations. In the popular mind, the concept of bonus is invariably associated with the idea of a reward which an employer gives to an employee for his exceptionally good work. In this case of AIG employees, it was an integral part of their pay packet.

Let us see the situation from another perspective. A surgeon cannot be denied his fee, even if an operation fails and the patient dies. A lawyer cannot be denied his fee even if his client loses the case. So why a banker who does his work with due diligence and sincerity be denied his contracted compensation, if he fails to add profit to his company due to circumstances beyond his control. Fact of the matter is that nobody in the world had foreseen the denouement of the story of subprime housing mortgages. One might argue, with some justification that the compensation paid to the top officials of the Bush administration should also be denied or heavily taxed because they failed to see the storm of recession coming well in time.

Jake DeSantis, the Executive Vice President of the AIG-Financial Products resigned on March 24, 2009. In his letter of resignation addressed to the CEO of AIG, he made a point that most of the employees of the finance product division who received the bonus had nothing to do with the large losses which occurred due to credit default swaps. He remarked, inter alia, that “None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.”

At this point of time it is purely academic to debate the ethicality or otherwise of the assailed AIG bonus. There are two seminal questions at this point which should be publicly debated.

Whether the law to tax such bonus retrospectively can stand legal scrutiny at the apex court; and

Whether taxing heavily AIG bonus will set a bad precedent and be detrimental to business climate in the USA.

The cardinal principle of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence is that an ex post facto rule of law is astoundingly unfair and therefore invalid ab initio. Constitution of the United States is categorical on this issue. Section 9 of the Article 1 of the Constitution lays down, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that the House of Representatives passed a bill levying tax on certain categories of bonuses with retroactive effect. In all likelihood, this law shall be set aside by the apex court. If the matter goes before the courts, it is bound to create lot of interest not limited to the law-practicing community.

The retroactive law, if upheld by the Supreme Court, will set a bad precedent for the American business. The entire financial system is based on the trust. Treasury bonds worth billions of dollars are bought on the trust that the interest rates committed will not change. How many people, least of all the foreign governments, will be interested in investing in those bonds, if they are not sure that in some not foreseeable future the Congress might dilute the interest rates retroactively? Will it not make purchasing the American debt a risky affair for China and Japan?

Many banks have received assistance under Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Since the law passed by the House relates only to those financial institutions who have been given massive financial assistance by the government, they may well tend to refuse such assistance as it would bind their hands in matters of deciding compensation to their executives. Financial institutions which fall in this category are the likes of Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America who may determine that the advantages of getting massive funds under TARP in exchange for their preference equity or general equity might not outweigh the advantages of their retaining operational freedom. This is all the more so when they are planning to sell their toxic assets to private equity funds and hedge funds. Accurate differential pricing of such assets will be crucial to the profitability of big banks and the whole exercise will need highly specialized skills and vast experience of their executives. Restricting their compensation package under an executive fiat or an oppressive tax regime is bound to encourage their prized employees to seek greener pastures elsewhere.

It is human nature to find a 'whipping boy' for their misfortunes. The monumental outpouring of public anger against the AIG bonus recipients stems from the people's belief that they were the villains of the piece, and that the recession would not have visited them but for them. The great hullabaloo on the AIG bonus issue has only resulted in distracting attention of the Obama administration from fixing the larger problem of rising unemployment and premature foreclosures on defaulted mortgages. Loss of 165 million dollars, assuming it is a dead loss and totally unjustified, is almost nothing in comparison to the federal budget of about 3,500 billion dollars, and less than almost nothing in comparison to the American economy of about 14,000 billion dollars.

We cannot afford to be million wise and billion foolish in our hour of supreme financial crisis.

Metastasis of Talibanism in Pakistan

Government of Pakistan has virtually agreed to the Talibanizaton of Swat district of its North West Frontier Province (NWFP). They have entered into a formal agreement with the militants for the promulgation of sharia laws of Islam.

The agreement is a fig leaf to Pakistan's total capitulation to militants in Swat. In the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, the writ of Pakistani government never ran. Now Swat has been added to the list of places in Pakistan where nobody cares for the government at Islamabad.

Swat district is in the Malakand division of NWFP. It is home of the Swat valley which is known the world over for its skiing resorts, fruit orchards, flowing streams and snow-capped peaks. For Al Queda and Taliban it is not only a political victory over Pakistan, it is a triumph of tremendous implications. The pride of the formidable Pakistani army has been severely wounded.

Pakistani army did not have many options in Swat. Its troops were outmaneuvered by the militants. Many, if not the most, Pakistani soldiers, who had the background of madrassa education felt empathy with the fundamental Islamic goals of the militants. There was yet another factor which demoralized Pakistani troops in that area. Since 2007, when the Taliban activities began in Swat, Pakistani army had ceded about three-fourths of the Swat area to the enemy. Talibans used savage methods of public beheadings and public floggings to terrorize civilians and the soldiers alike. According to Amnesty International, a quarter to half a million people have fled Swat since 2007, and at least 1,200 civilians have been killed in the region. Barbaric cruelty of Talibans induced a speechless fear in a large number of Pak soldiers. Demoralization has set in all their ranks.

There is a reason why the Talibans of Afghan origin felt at home in fighting in NWFP. The NWFP is primarily an area inhabited by Pakhtoons (also called Pashtoons or Pathans). They are of the same ethnicity as the majority of Afghans. In fact, the people of NWFP, of which Swat is only a district, are culturally quite different from the rest of Pakistan. They speak a different language, and their traditional way of living has nothing in common with the rest of Pakistanis. They have always had a secret longing for uniting with Afghanistan.

It is interesting to visit the contemporary history of NWFP. Pakistan came into existence in 1947 as a result of the partition of erstwhile India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. NWFP was the odd man out. Out of all of the 5 provinces proposed to constitute Pakistan, only NWFP did not have a Muslim League government in spite of its being a Muslim-majority province. It was governed by a coalition of Indian National Congress (INC), Khudai Khidmatgars and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind. INC and its coalition partners hated the ideology of Pakistan. People of NWFP were also averse to join the new state of Pakistan because they believed their ethnicity would be compromised by joining Pakistan, which might be ruled by Punjabis and the Urdu-speaking migrants from Northern India. However, the geography of the subcontinent was against them. They were landlocked and the choice given to them in the referendum ordained by India Independence Act 1947 was to join either Pakistan or India. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who was known as Frontier Gandhi, and his brother Dr Khan Sahib, who was the then Chief Minister of NWFP, agitated for an independent status for NWFP by the name of Pakhtoonistan. In June 1947, Acharya Kripalani, the president of INC, wrote a letter to Lord Mountbatten, the then Viceroy, pleading for an option for NWFP for independence along with the option of joining either India or Pakistan. Two months earlier to his letter, the British Legation in Kabul had written to Government of India, that “the view taken by the Afghan Government is that the tribesmen in tribal territory are more closely connected with the Afghan Government than with the Interim Government of India and the Afghans have, as you know, already asked that the tribes should be given the option of securing their complete independence or joining themselves to Afghanistan if they wish to do so rather than continue as part of India”. However, India Independence Act of the British Parliament did not give them that choice, and NWFP willy-nilly became a part of Pakistan. They could not vote for India as geography was against them. The turnout of the voters in the referendum was extremely poor in spite of a vicious and violent campaign launched in favor of Pakistan by Muslim League.

Presently there are three political forces swinging in the NWFP. First is the active political and military presence of Talibans and Al Qaeda. Second is the presence of the demoralized and confused Pak army. Third is the yearning of Pakhtoons to get detached from Pakistan. A virulent anti-American sentiment is cementing all these forces to the detriment to the concept of a united Pakistan.

Talibanism in FATA and Swat is thriving on the vulnerability of the dysfunctional body politic of Pakistan. It is difficult to see how a military effort alone can prevent it from encroaching upon the settled areas of NWFP. With the historical background of NWFP it is very difficult for Pakistan to retain political or military control over NWFP for a long time.

Talibans are now trying to gain footholds beyond NWFP. On Feb 7 and Feb 11 this year they attacked two police outposts in Mianwali district of Punjab which lies along the river Indus. Punjab has a chain of mosques where Wahabi brand of Islam is preached. Talibans may find them handy in promoting their agenda.

Talibanism is now beginning to metastasize.

Twin Rubik Cubes of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Mr Richard Holbrooke is bound to feel elated at the supreme confidence reposed in him by President Obama. However, he will soon realize that his job is not exactly a bed of roses.

He has been asked to clear the terrible mess American interests are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. USA has two primary goals in that region. One is to destroy completely the training camps and leadership of Al Qaeda and Taliban. Second goal is to ensure that the nuclear assets of the Pakistan do not fall in the hands of extremist elements.

It is easy to see that both these goals do overlap, making this region a veritable nightmare for the Obama administration.

Holbrooke's mission is much more than an uphill task. In Pakistan he is facing at least three main power centers at the federal level. One is the civilian government, another is the army, and yet another is Inter- Services Agency called ISI. They have different perspectives as to what the national interests of Pakistan are. In theory, army is subject to civilian control. In actual practice, it is the other way round. Government cannot take any crucial policy decision without taking army chief into confidence. In May 1999, the Pakistani army took the decision to rattle India by initiating what is known in the contemporary history as Kargil War. It is widely believed that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was kept in total dark and he came to know only after the attack on the Indian positions by Pak army units actually began. Similarly, ISI is supposed to be a part of Pakistani defense establishment. But in actual practice it is an autonomous body who has its own foreign policy goals and own views on domestic politics. It believes brass of Pakistani army to be too soft and naive to understand the realpolitik. The head of the ISI is always a senior officer of the rank of Lieutenant General of the army who after being appointed to the post falls in the tradition of asserting ISI's Independence from the army headquarters. Before Ashfaq Parvez Kayani succeeded General Parvez Musharraf as the Chief of the Army Staff he had been the Director General of the ISI for three years. The attack on the Indian embassy at Kabul on July 7, 2008 was engineered by ISI presumably without the knowledge of Pakistani army or the Pakistani government. Taliban provided only the fig leaf for that attack. It is also believed that the dastardly attack on Mumbai in November 2008 was done by an extremist Pakistani outfit Lashkar-i-Taiba with the active support and professional training of ISI. Much of the power of ISI stems from the fact that it keeps dossiers on most of the politicians, many of whom have many skeletons in their cupboards.

There is yet another aspect of the fractured polity of Pakistan. Pakistan has four major provinces. Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Between NWFP and Afghanistan lies an area called Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). Its area is more than 27000 square kilometers and its population more than three million. FATA is nominally a part of Pakistan but the writ of the Pakistani government does not run there. It is controlled by fiercely independent Pakhtoons. Culturally they consider themselves Afghans and are happy thriving on narcotic and arms trade. It is irony of history that they fall in east of the Durand Line which is the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Durand Line was drawn arbitrarily by the British Government in the year 1893 between the then British India and Afghanistan's the then ruler Amir Abdur Rehman Khan. The treaty formalizing the Durand Line was for one hundred years and has lapsed in the year 1993. The Afghan govt has refused to renew the treaty. No Afghan government has ever accepted Durand Line as the international border between them and British India (or its successor state Pakistan). In fact the Loya Jirga of Afghanistan has repudiated in 1949 the Durand Line as the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, Pakistan does not feel itself obliged to renegotiate the treaty. It believes that Durand Line is the international border in perpetuity. Even during the Taliban regime when Pakistan was extremely friendly with it, Afghan government did not agree to the legitimacy of Duranad Line. It is felt by Pakhtoons that it artificially divides Pukhtoons living in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Durand line has been a continuous source of tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

FATA which is politically a part of Pakistan has become adopted home of Al Qaeda. American intelligence agencies believe that Osama bin Laden and his top operators are hiding in FATA. The mountainous and rugged terrain of FATA also helps the Al Qaeda fighters. American pilotless drone aircraft are repeatedly bombing the suspected hideouts of Al Qaeda as and when they get actionable intelligence. Americans do not share their intelligence with Pakistan, because they suspect their intelligence might be clandestinely passed by the ISI to the Taliban or maybe even to Al Qaeda.

The chief reason of Pakistan facing problems in FATA is the fact that inhabitants of FATA think themselves as more of Afghans than Pakistanis. Kabul has always claimed that NWFP as a whole belongs to Afghanistan as it is inhabited by Pakhtoons. The name NWFP itself is not an ethnic name unlike Punjab, Sindh or Baluchistan.

The story of Swat is intriguing. It is an administrative district in th NWFP and home of Swat Valley, which is popularly known to be the Switzerland of Pakistan. It is a place of exquisite natural beauty and home to a number of skiing resorts. Since December 2008, practically the entire Swat is under control of Talibans. They have banned female education, watching TV, listening to music. Men are obliged to keep beards. They have burnt down more than 170 schools for girls. Swat is hardly 100 miles away from the capital of Pakistan, and its falling into the hands of Taliban militants has introduced a new equation in the already tangled political and military situations in Pakistan.

Situation in Afghanistan is no better, if not far more worse. The writ of Hamid Karzai government does not run beyond Kabul. The functionaries of his government are steeped in corruption and the governors of Afghan provinces do not care for the central authority. The Afghan army is ill-trained and poorly organized and virtually ineffective as a fighting force. Present position is little short of pathetic. Presently there are deployed troops from the USA and other NATO countries. They have dual function of supporting the Karzai government and hunting Taliban and Al Qaeda. There is a United Nations Military force International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stationed there since December 2001. Presently it is commanded by Eurocorps since August 9, 2004. The function of this 6500-strong force is to help the Afghan administration reconstruct the country in all fields of public life. Unlike NATO forces, it is supposed to be politically neutral.

Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic society. Pakhtoons are the most prominent group. Then there are Hazaras, Tajiks and Ujbeks. All these groups have their own political agendas. Hazaras are supported by Iran, because they are shias like Iranians. Not only this, almost the entire opium produced in Afghanistan is exported via Iran. All these factors make the role and authority of Kabul utterly diminished. The American envoy might find it difficult logistically talk to the leaders of the major ethnic groups who are corrupt and do not care for anybody in Kabul or Washington, but without whose support the Afghan imbroglio cannot be untangled.

Holbrooke is a great negotiator and has unquestionably profound skills of a star diplomat. However, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is tangled, messy and full of so many power centers that the distinguished American envoy may not find it easy to solve the twin Rubik cubes of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pedigree of American Recession

The present recession in the USA has a complicated pedigree.

The story begins with the tragic events on September 11, 2001. The dastardly attack on the USA by Al Qaida shook the soul of America as never before. The earlier major national traumatic experience was Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. But it was peanuts in comparison with what took place on 9/11. Al Qaida pierced the very heart of America. Japanese had used their own aircraft as weapons at Pearl Harbor. In 9/11, Al Qaida used the American aircraft to stress the humiliation heaped on American psyche.

The 9/11 attack kicked-off a chain of events. It triggered off invasion of Iraq as the American government believed on the basis of the evidence available to it that the next attack on the United States, possibly nuclear, might come from Iraq. Iraq war was a huge military success in the initial phase, but since then it has dragged on interminably. The military activities are over in Iraq, but a huge contingent of troops continues to stay there. It continues to drain the American treasury.

There are various estimates as to the cost of Iraq war. The Bush administration understandably downplayed the cost. We must take into consideration not only the upfront cost incurred on the military deployment and operations but also the staggering social and economic costs which might not be obvious. According to Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, in a scholarly article published in the Washington Post on March 9, 2008, the total cost of Iraq war might exceed 3 trillion dollars. Even if we assume that their estimate was liberal by a factor of 2, in a 14-trillion economy, a wasteful and entirely non-productive outlay of 1.5 trillion dollars is bound to be impactful.

Even before the Iraq war, the federal budget of the United States had a huge deficit. The war opened the floodgates of expenditure. This expenditure was met with the borrowed money of national debt, which was soaring by about $1 billion a day, thanks to the heavy purchase of the debt by China and other exporters to the United States. Iraq War, along with Afghanistan war, made its own contribution to the recession which is plaguing the United States and therefore the world, today.

The balance of trade between China and the USA has been continuously rising in favor of China since 1986. During recent times, it has grown from $203 billion in the year 2003 to $266 billion in the year 2008. Cumulatively it adds up to about one and a quarter billion dollars over the last six years. Quite a good chunk of this money has been used by the Chinese in purchasing the US national debt. Can we, therefore, not say that Chinese-American trade also played a role, albeit indirectly, in deepening the financial crisis?

However, the greatest and most visible contribution to the recession was made by so-called subprime landing. These were the loans granted by bankers for buying houses, cars and other assets without checking the paying capacity of the borrowers. Most of the borrowers of such loans did not have adequate capacity to service their mortgages. Such mortgages were then collated by the first lenders in various bundles, securitized and sliced suitably in the form of attractive looking bonds at high coupon rates and sold to greedy investors who believed they were too clever to go for the traditional form of investments. Thus banks created assets for themselves some of which were ab initio non-performing assets or toxic assets. The ultimate value of such bank assets depends upon whether the mortgages taken against those bonds are repaid or not.

The bubble burst, as it was destined to, and the people ran for cover. The value of the assets based on such securitized bonds fell freely as though under gravity. Value of stocks of banks and other corporations in the share market plummeted. It severely restricted the capacity of banks to open fresh lines of credit. In turn, this made the entire economic system totter on the brink of uncertainly, if not sure disaster. Moralists feel it all happened due to human greed. Economists say it was all due to lack of adequate regulation and overseeing of the financial system.

Consumer spending has got steeply diminished. The 14-trillion dollar American economy depends at least 65 per cent on consumer spending, both on goods and services. Demand of goods and services is falling and and people have lost jobs in consequence. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since December 2007. Imagine the misery it must have brought to so many households. People are finding it very painful to survive.

The fundamental strategy to address this grim scenario is to boost demand, which can only be done by injecting huge outlays in the system. Food stamps and unemployment benefits are sure shot as the recipients are bound to spend the money as soon as possible. Tax cuts to the low income groups is another way to inject expendable money in the system. President Obama has creative ideas like going in a big way building infrastructure like new roads and schools. Giving money to states is also a good idea as it will stimulate social security programs like Medicaid. Banks should also get huge chunks of money so that they are able to reactivate their lines of credit to the borrowers who might be willing to invest in productive ventures.

At this point of time it is difficult to say what should be the nitty-gritty of stimulus package. Time alone can say to what extent Obama administration will succeed in averting the economic disaster.

On Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter died yesterday at the age of 88. He was one of my favorite writers.

I came to know about Pinter about a decade ago when I traveled from Bucharest to New York. I am a vegetarian and the cabin crew had mixed up my food with something I do not eat. The perceptive Israeli woman sitting next to me remarked that such stupid errors cannot happen in her country. That was the beginning of an interesting talk about kosher food, Jewish institution of kibbutz and Jewish contribution to human civilization. We also talked about the place in the history of mankind of great Jewish names such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Henry Bergson, Franz Kafka, and other timeless celebrities.

She asked, “What do you think of Pinter?” Like an ignoramus, I blurted, “Pinter? Who is that?” That was the beginning of my acquaintance with Harold Pinter. She gave me a brief oral backgrounder on Pinter. From that day on, I grabbed any book written by Pinter. The more I read his works, the more I fell in love with them. My admiration for the great writer grew exponentially as time passed.

Pinter had a lower middle class ancestry. He spent the formative years of his life in a London Grammar school. The friends he made in those days, like Henry Woolf, Mick Goldstein and Morris Wernick remained an integral part of his emotional life.

This is not an obituary of Pinter. It is a just my personal tribute to one of the greatest literary figures of 20th century. In his acceptance speech of Nobel Prize in 2005, he said “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”

That was perhaps the essence of wisdom coming from this great man. It placed him along with Kierkegaard, Sartre and other great existential thinkers.

He was as fond of Noam Chomsky as Chomsky was of him. And like Chomsky he was fearless, formidable and utterly honest. He was a leading critical voice against violation of human rights all over the world. His defense of Kurdish people against the Turkish repression will remain memorable in the contemporary history. He talked in simple language and spoke the truth with devastating effect. Nobel Prize did not add any additional glamour to his name. It only served to make his name heard repeatedly at the dinner tables of bejeweled high-society ladies.

The Grand Architecture of Nuclear Disarmament

The World War-II ended in 1945. However, there was no peace in the world. Only the actors and mode of hostilities got changed. Allied and Axis powers were replaced by the new two super powers: the USA and the USSR. The hostile interaction between them was called Cold War. The activities in the theaters of war were replaced by open political hostilities and often by proxy wars. Some people called it a war between capitalism and communism. It had all the fanaticism of medieval religious battles. Both parties were preparing for a hypothetical supreme clash on a gigantic level. Each of these two superpowers believed in the inevitability of such a conflict. They went on arming themselves with nuclear weapons of increasing firepower and deadly accurate delivery systems. With time their inventory of nuclear weapons grew to monstrous levels. At one point it was said that either of them had more than adequate number of nuclear weapons to blow off the world seven times over.

However, at some deeper level there existed feeling of unease in both the countries. The leaders of the Soviet Union and the USA also felt that it was a mad, mad race with no end in sight. Various attempts, some half-hearted, some sincere, were made by them to halt this inexorable march towards catastrophe. The leaders of these two powerful countries at some point must have realized themselves to be utterly stupid. But the situation was like riding a tiger. It was difficult to get off it.

United Nations was the only international body which could initiate talks on nuclear disarmament. The effort began in a modest way. First there came a 10-Nation Committee on Disarmament in 1959. It was followed by the 18-Nation Committee on Disarmament in 1962. It attempted to organize a dialogue between the USA and the USSR at the height of so-called Cold War. The 18-Nation outfit also failed to deliver any result, although it lasted till 1968. It was only in the year 1979 when the United Nations set up Conference on Disarmament (CD) located in Geneva. It was a unique, multinational platform for conducting negotiations on disarmament.

In the due course of time, a number of international agreements came about out with a view to realizing the dream of a nuclear-weapon-free world. First to come out was Limited Ban Treaty (LTBT), also known as Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). It entered into force on October 10, 1963. It proscribed testing of nuclear weapons anywhere except underground. Subsequently, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT or NNPT) came into force on March 5, 1970. It aimed at preventing development or acquiring of nuclear weapons by those states which did not have them already as on January 1, 1967. Next was Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT). It entered into force on December 11, 1990. Under the treaty no signatory of the treaty was allowed to have the maximum destructive power of a nuclear weapon more than 150 kilotons of TNT. The ceiling sounds ironical in face of the fact that the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima had the destructive power of only (!) 15 kilotons of TNT.

The most important treaty, however, is the one which has yet to enter into force in spite of it having been signed more than 12 years ago. It is the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty (CTBT).The treaty bans all the nuclear tests anywhere and for all times. It carries forward significantly the Partial/Limited Test Ban Treaty (PTBT/LTBT) which bans all such test explosions, except those conducted underground. The CTBT will come into force immediately as soon as the USA ratifies it. Hopefully, the Obama Administration will give priority to the ratification of CTBT by the Senate. Once the nuclear tests are abolished by the force of CTBT, it is very unlikely that any country, signatory or non-signatory, will have guts to violate it. CTBT, after it has entered into force, will be an iconic landmark. It will reinforce international morality. It will say “so far and no further” to the development of nuclear assets. It is a matter of great credit to Russia and the USA that they have not conducted a nuclear test since 1990 and 1992 respectively in spite the CTBT having not entered into force.

It is hoped that Pakistan and India will also sign CTBT for the simple reason that they each have adequate deterrent nuclear power. It will be stupid on their part to go for a fresh nuclear test and earn world opprobrium without any advantage. India has already voluntarily declared moratorium on fresh nuclear tests in addition to their No First Use (NFU) policy. Pakistan has neither declared moratorium on fresh tests, nor they have a NFU policy. They do not have a well-defined, transparent nuclear doctrine and they seem to suffer from a chronic inferiority complex vis-à-vis their eastern neighbor.

No First Use (NFU) is a formidable weapon in the non-proliferation campaign. So far only China and India have declared that they will not be the first to use a nuclear weapon. If all the nuclear weapon countries enter into a treaty that they will not be the first to use their nuclear weapon against anybody, the world will be a safer place. At this point of time it is only a pipe dream.

Yet another treaty of tremendous importance is Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). Presently, the world is awash with uranium and plutonium, the two well-known fissile materials. It is estimated there exist globally about 1600 tons of highly-enriched uranium and 500 tons of weapon-grade plutonium. If an FMCT sees the light of the day soon, all this uranium and plutonium will become legally unusable for producing nuclear warheads. The treaty is yet at the proposal stage. Underlying logic of CTBT and FMCT is straightforward. CTBT will put a halt on all test explosions of nuclear weapons, and thus will prevent development of fresh weapons, and stall attempts to upgrade the existing ones. FMCT will slash the jugular of the nuclear monster. It will prevent production of the enriched uranium and plutonium without which a nuclear device cannot be produced. It is a thousand pities that FMCT is still at the proposal stage and even the negotiations for its formulation have not begun.

In between these international treaties, which have come into force, and which have yet to come in force, and which are yet to be formulated like FMCT there have taken place bilateral agreements like SALT-I and SALT-II. The acronym SALT stands for Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. SALT-I was signed between the USA and USSR in May 26, 1972. It significantly restricted the so-called Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM) systems. It froze the total number of strategic missile launchers at the existing levels pending further negotiations of a more comprehensive treaty limiting strategic missiles and bombers. It boosted the morale of all those people who were campaigning to dismantle the nuclear infrastructure. It was a landmark agreement in those days.

SALT-II was to follow in June 1979. It was signed by the USA and the Soviet Union at Vienna. It provided that each signatory party shall have the same level of strategic weapons. This included strategic bombers, strategic delivery vehicles, and strategic missiles. It was to be reviewed and negotiated for further mutual reduction of nuclear weapons. However there was no follow-up due to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. SALT-II was also not ratified by either party. But it redounds to the credit of both the superpowers that the major constraints laid down in SALT-II were scrupulously observed by both the sides. It was, I think, because both the countries had realized that it was the stupidest thing in the world to go on wasting their precious resources on acquiring and developing nuclear arms which would never be used.

Another monumental agreement Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty-I (START-I), (called at that time SALT-III) was signed by the USA and the Soviet Union on July 31, 1991. This agreement provided that either party shall not have more than 6,000 nuclear warheads on either side. It also provided, inter alia, that each party shall not have in aggregate more than 1600 deployed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), Submarine-launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM) and heavy bombers.

START-I was followed by START-II. It was signed by President George H W Bush and Boris Yeltsin on January 3, 1993. It banned the use of Multiple Independently targetable Reentry vehicles (MIRV) on ICBMs, and is often cited as the De-MIRVing Agreement. Both the countries had MIRVs which were dangerous because they put a premium on first strike. For example, if the American President puts 10 MIRVs on one of his ICBMs and fires it towards Russia, each MIRV will carry a nuclear weapon and deliver it on a pre-specified target. Hence 10 targets might be hit in Russia in a single go. Same scenario applied to America if the Russian President became wild earlier.

START-II was ratified by the United States Senate unconditionally in January 26, 1996, and the Russian Duma ratified it on April 14, 2000 but only conditionally. Net result was that it never entered into force. On June 14, 2002, Russia announced that it would no longer consider itself bound by START-II.

The third Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START-III, was negotiated between the USA and Russia. It aimed to significantly diminish their nuclear inventories. The negotiations of the treaty were kicked-off in 1997 at Helsinki between President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin. They agreed in principle that each party reduce nuclear stockpiles to 2,000 to 2,500 warheads. But there were insurmountable political problems to formalize the agreement. Russia was opposed to eastward expansion of NATO and building by Americans a missile defense system, which would need American withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Treaty. There was a stalemate on the issue of the proposed missile defense system. The treaty finally got killed when the USA withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty on June 13, 2002.

START-II was officially replaced by Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT), which was signed by George W.Bush and Vladimir Putin at Moscow Summit on May 24, 2002. Each of the signatories agreed to reduce their operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700-2,200 by the year 2012. SORT entered into force on June 1, 2003.

There were other important bilateral treaties signed between the two superpowers. The Soviet Union and the U.S. signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) on December 8, 1987. The agreement came into force in June 1, 1988. It did not specify any time frame. It is said this treaty landmarked the beginning of the end of Cold War. The treaty sought to destroy nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The treaty specified a deadline of June 1, 1991 to do so. Adhering to the deadline, 846 and 1846 intermediate range weapon systems were eliminated by the U.S. and the Soviet Union respectively. What a hugely precious achievement for mankind! Imagine how many Hiroshimas and Nagasakis were saved!

An important element in nuclear disarmament is to put curb on delivery systems of nuclear weapons. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were ruined by atom bombs dropped on them from planes. That was way back in mid-Forties. Beginning in the Fifties the USA and the Soviet Union wasted their large technological and financial resources on the development of formidable ballistic missile systems. These systems were capable of delivering nuclear assets on the enemy territory or ships with incredible precision. As part of the Strategic Arms limitation Talks, the USA and the USSR negotiated a treaty to curb the menace of big-ticket ballistic missiles. It was signed on May 26, 1972 and entered into force on October 3 of the same year. It prohibited both the countries from deploying nationwide defenses against strategic ballistic missiles. In the treaty preamble, the two sides asserted that effective limits on anti-missile systems would be a "substantial factor in curbing the race in strategic offensive arms." It also banned the transfer or deployment of ABM systems or components outside the United States/ Soviet territory. The protocol attached to the treaty in 1974 allowed specifically one regional defense of 100 ground-based missile interceptors to protect either the national capital or an ICBM field. Soviets selected Moscow. Americans selected Grand Forks Air Force Base located in North Dakota. The treaty remained in force till June 13, 2002 when the USA unilaterally withdrew from it due to political reasons. It was the first time that USA unilaterally withdrew from a major international obligation. It was argued by the Bush administration that withdrawal was in their national interest, as without withdrawing from the treaty, it was not possible to build National Missile Defense to protect the USA from nuclear blackmail by a rogue state. However, many analysts felt that death of the treaty was a formidable blow to the campaign for nuclear non-proliferation.

This is the brief story of nuclear disarmament campaign. The story is not yet over and there have been glitches and hiccoughs enough to give impression to the cynic that the world will never be free from the scourge of nuclear weapons. For example, in the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy held in February, 2007 President Putin publicly suggested reconsidering the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the USA and USSR. The Russians asked as to why only the USA and the USSR should be the countries not having small and medium range of missiles, while other countries like China, India, Pakistan, and many other were freely developing them. Similarly, there was the unilateral American withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty on June 13, 2002. The very next day, the Russians declared they did not consider themselves bound by the START-II treaty. But in spite of all these negative developments, the worldwide sentiment against the nuclear weapons is prevailing and is strong. It is hoped Obama administration will advance the cause of nuclear disarmament by ratifying the CTBT, and by committing to the No First Use of the nuclear weapons.

The Intriguing Story of Intraocular Pressure (IOP)

Glaucoma is a serious eye disease, which may cause vision loss and ultimately result in blindness, if not treated in time. The common way to determine whether Glaucoma is round the corner in your case is to get your eyes tested for Intraocular Pressure (IOP).

There are many ways to determine IOP, but applanation tonometry is considered to be the gold standard. Once the IOP or tension exceeds 20 mgHg in the eyes of a patient, doctors immediately prescribe appropriate treatment to lower the tension.

The normal value of IOP is essentially based on the data collected meticulously by a large number of investigators. In most of the studies, the mean value of IOP has been found to be 15.5 mmHg with standard deviation of 2.5 mmHg. The distribution of IOP values is not normal in the statistical sense, and the eye pressure in healthy people has been found to vary between 10 and 21 mmHg. The values of IOP taken over a large number of people are skewed towards higher values. It means more people have pressures higher than 15.5 than those having lower than it. Doctors, trying to hunt for glaucoma get concerned if the IOP of a patient exceeds 21 mgHg.

From January 1985 to November 1988, an epidemiological eye study was conducted in East Baltimore, Maryland. More than 5000 persons aged 40 or more were subjected to comprehensive testing for glaucoma. They were screened by all the available diagnostic tools available at that time. The investigators found that in case of a glaucomatous eye, its IOP being more than 22 mmHg was 8.6 times higher than the likelihood of its having IOP less than 22 mg. That showed a strong positive correlation between glaucoma and the IOP being more than 22. Hence, the figure of 22 mgHg got stuck in the collective memory of the physicians as the cutoff point. To further simply, the figure of 22 was rounded off to 20. Things became simpler: if your eye shows IOP more than 20 mgHg you are having either glaucoma or at least a high risk for this disease.

That was the scenario till 2002 when a large American study called Ocular Hypertension Study (OHTS) was published. It found a statistically significant correlation between the central corneal thickness (CCT) and IOP. The study showed that CCT is a reliable predictor of development of glaucoma. If your cornea is thin, that is, less than 555 microns, you have three times greater risk of developing glaucoma than those fortunate people whose cornea is more than 588 microns. The implication was that thin corneas should be viewed with greater respect by the physician as they have a more nuisance value as far as glaucoma is concerned. Of course, it does not mean that the thin cornea is a causative factor in the development of glaucoma. The OHTS implied, inter alia, that the role of thin corneas is to blow the whistle in conjunction with high IOP.

OHTS has conclusively shown that a thicker cornea tends to inflate the value of IOP, and vice versa. For example, your IOP may be 24 mgHg and yet it may not be alarming if your CCT is 587 microns. Conversely, your IOP may be 15 mmHg but it may be alarming if your CCT is 470 microns. The practical problem in the prevention and management of glaucoma is that an ophthalmologist, who is trained in the eighties or earlier, might not be familiar with the newly found relationship between the CCT and IOP. He still goes by the rule of the thumb that more than 20 mgHg pressure consistently shown in the eye by applanation tonometry calls for preventive or curative measures for glaucoma.

Of course, it may not be always fair to blame the ophthalmologist for it. In the villages and small towns of India, there is hardly an ophthalmologist who is equipped with the instrument for measuring corneal thickness. Sometimes he does not have even a slit lamp or an applanation tonometer. In those conditions it is very difficult for him to correlate corneal thickness with IOP and reach a satisfactory value of IOP for diagnostic purpose. I have seen that even in the USA, the 20 mgHg rule of the thumb is often applied. I specifically know a dear friend of mine whose glaucoma was discovered when it was too late. During his routine eye checkups, his IOP had been consistently within the normal range for many years. However, they did not care to check his corneal thickness. Had they checked up his corneas for thickness they would have found them relatively thin.

Before 2002, ophthalmologists knew that some people do have glaucoma even when the tension in their eye is normal. They called it normotensive glaucoma. However, they did not understand the why of it. Even now, they are not sure about the whole story. But After the Ocular Hypertension Study in 2002 they now at least know about the part played by the corneal thickness in the diagnosis of glaucoma. Pachymeter, which measures corneal thickness, is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of eye-care specialists who are waging a relentless war against glaucoma.