Politician Number One: Modi

East Asia & G-20 Summits: PM Narendra Modi most sought-after leader at Brisbane meet

It is not Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or Shinzo Abe or Angela Merkel - leaders of the five most powerful countries of the world - who are most sought after at the East Asia and G-20 Summits. Instead it is Narendra Modi, elected to the high office only six months back, who has received maximum requests for bilateral meetings from his counterparts and heads of state on the sidelines of East Asia, ASEAN and G-20 Summits in Myanmar and Australia later this week. ..... the emphasis is on meeting leaders such as German Chancellor Merkel and former British PM Gordon Brown (in Brisbane) whom the PM has not met yet ..... Besides, Modi could meet leaders of France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Mexico, Argentina and Nigeria in Brisbane on the sidelines of the G20 meet. Meeting with the Canadian PM, South Korean President and European Union leaders are also on the cards.

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Was Syria Bait?

Vladimir Putin - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2009 (Photo credit: World Economic Forum)

Barack Obama: An American Portrait (Photo credit: tsevis)

Barack Obama showed flashes of political genius in his first speech that introduced him to America, at the Kerry Convention. He showed flashes of genius on the campaign trail. He showed flashes of genius in his first few years in office. Nailing health care reform after 50 years of trial and error, Wall Street reform. Getting Bin Laden was a flash of genius.

Immigration reform is in a ditch, and that is a sore point.

He took the right move on Libya. A dictator was toppled. But I was sore with him on Syria. How could he? How could he stand by?

But by now Syria feels like bait. It pulled Russia in. And by now Putin looks overstretched and brittle. Putin is a dictator. The Russian economy is the size of the Indian economy. It is not that big right now. And it is headed in the wrong direction. As in, India will double and triple in size and Russia will stagnate.

Obama just might topple Putin. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush -- none of them brought democracy to Russia. Obama might.

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Iran, Russia: Election Holding Non Democracies

ayatullah khamenei (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A country can hold elections and still not be a democracy. Iran and Russia are good examples.

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Why Iran Is Nervous

Iran (Persia) with Black, Caspian and Arabian seas around (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Think of Iran as a chair. You take Assad out of the picture and now the chair has only three legs. Is the chair nervous at the prospect?

Assad is worth taking out with or without chemical weapons. The chair ending up with three legs is a good thing for what the Iranian regime did in 2009 to its own people.

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Russia's Turn

Image by didkovskaya via FlickrWhen things were rumbling in Egypt I predicted this democracy tsunami is also going to hit America and Russia and China. Well, it did hit America. We call it the Occupy Movement. And now looks like it is Russia's turn.

China might have largely skipped the Great Recession but there is no skipping the democracy tsunami. But I think the democracy wave will have to succeed in Russia before it touches China. Just like the wave will have to succeed in Iran before Saudi Arabia is affected.

I am positive. Obama's reelection will not be the biggest news of 2012. 2012 will be the year of the tsunami of democracy.

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Is Russia Too Big For A Democracy Movement?

Image via WikipediaThere are those who say Tunisia is one thing, Egypt is big, but Egypt is one thing, Gaddafi is a dictator, but he is one thing, but Russia is too big, Putin is too powerful. You can't be talking in terms of a democracy movement for Russia.

I would argue otherwise.

Precisely because Russia is so big, it deserves to have a bigger and better democracy movement than we have seen so far in the Arab world. It might happen in Russia before it happens in China.

Military action is out of question. It is not realistic to think you can bomb Russia. I never wanted to bomb Libya in the first place. But what I do prescribe for Russia is massive, massive street action. A people have to pay that price if they want liberty, if they want free speech, if they want democracy. Massive street
Image via Wikipediaaction is like everyone decided to go to school, the school of political consciousness.

A democracy that comes from massive street action will necessarily have a better, smoother transition period that follows the success of a revolution.

Saudi Arabia and Iran before Russia, and Russia before China. I think that is what we might be looking at.

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