Bay of Pigs redux

The mercenaries won't cut it for the urban naxals

Bay of Pigs redux: The mercenaries won’t cut it for the urban naxals

Rajeev Srinivasan, May 17th, 2020

India’s leftists have a recurring wet dream: that they could bring the ancien regime back to power (the good old days of 2004-2014), if only that annoying Prime Minister were out of the way. 

Americans, Cold Warrior George Kennan said in 1948, view war “as a sort of sporting contest outside of all political context”. Russians, according to him, “grasped the perpetual rhythm of struggle, in and out of war”. (Quotes courtesy The Economist). 

Many Indians follow the American view, but urban naxal types are deadly serious about the Russian view. They also like “Unrestricted Warfare”, as in the book of the same name by two Chinese colonels in 1999. We need to understand their perspective. 

Lutyens fellow-travelers of the urban guerillas, annoyed at the extinction of their Mughal-courtier-style access to power and profit based on their convent-accented English, periodically let their anger burst forth. A notorious but well-connected TV interviewer (possibly unintentionally) blurted out something about the “sudden removal” of the PM from the picture some time ago. 

Others have been more discreet, but the game plan is clear: (preferably violent) overthrow of the government. Seditious, yes, and it would invite serious punishment in sane countries, but not in soft-state India. 

A coup, in other words. This gives a frisson of excitement to all those would-be urban guerillas, whose main goal is anarchy: they would love to have blood in the streets. Other people’s blood, of course. The Indian armed forces, they believe, are too meek and tame to be goaded into a coup d’etat. 

There’s the Chinese, but they may not want to be too involved yet. So what’s the answer? Mercenaries. And where would you get them?

Some years ago, I asked the question https://www.rediff.com/news/column/keep-up-the-demonisation-and-youll-get-the-govt-you-deserve/20151104.htm: “What exactly would you do, Mr. Leftie? Call the New York Times?” Even though that question was in jest, that is, in fact, what urban naxals might do, because the US Deep State (NYT is one of its standard-bearers) is quite good at arranging coups on demand. 

Quoting the forthcoming The Folly and the Glory byTim Weiner, The Economist magazine claims that “America’s most illustrious newspapers all employed ‘at least one journalist working for or moonlighting for the CIA’”. Not hard to believe, gIven the withering contempt and just plain hatred exhibited by western media for India and Hindus https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/when-it-comes-to-india-most-expatriate-journalists-display-an-inherent-racism and how this has seen a quantum leap lately. 

To give credit where it is due, the Deep State has indeed delivered in the past: Mossadegh in Iran, Salvador Allende in Chile, Manuel Noriega in Panama. And also Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. And the Grenada invasion. There must be several others that we are forgetting, but all are notches on the belt for the Deep State. 

There is also usually plausible deniability because it is some group of ex-special forces doing the dirty deed; and if they are caught, disclaim all responsibility. 

This model has worked well, as above. But there is at least one abject failure, that is the Bay of Pigs misadventure, where a group of Cuban emigres in the US set out to overthrow Fidel Castro during John Kennedy’s tenure in 1961. A force of about 1,400 landed on a beach in the Bay of Pigs, but were defeated, caught and put on television, confessing. It was a massive humiliation and a grave foreign policy failure for the Americans.

And now, there’s another. A bumbling invasion of Venezuela has been repulsed, and the would-be coup nipped on the bud. The CIA looks like the Keystone Cops here, too. On May 3rd, a small group of mercenaries attempted to land near Caracas, with the intent of kidnapping the President, Nicolas Maduro, and spiriting him off to the US (the Noriega model).

They were liquidated by the Venezuelan armed forces, who had been tipped off by a former general. Furthermore, another group of would-be invaders was captured, drifting offshore. This included two former American soldiers, and they confessed on TV that they had been tasked with capturing the Venezuelan president. 

It is alleged that Juan Guaido, the opposition leader who is recognized by several western countries as the interim president, had entered into an agreement with a mercenary named Jordan Goudreau, a former special-forces soldier. For a price tag of $213 million, the ‘coup’ seemed a little expensive, but then money may be no object when regime change is the goal.

Do Indian urban naxals have a spare $213 million lying around? Well, the watchdog Global Financial Integrity said that $462 billion (with a ‘b’) was illegally transferred out of India https://gfintegrity.org/press-release/new-report-finds-illicit-capital-flight-india-us-462-billion/  between 1948 and 2008 (and surely the pace accelerated between 2004 and 2014). Doubtless, the millions to hire the mercenaries to attack India can be rusted up. 

But the debacle in Venezuela must have really dispirited the urban guerillas. The New York Times and friends look slightly less than competent. And sadly, Delhi is pretty far from the sea. What a shame!

862 words, 17 May 2020